united states. we've decided to go deeper, fewer and emphasis on critical thinking. >> and what are the keys going to be, do you think, to make sure that vision of changed instruction is delivered upon? >> well, there's a couple of things, not the least of which is, you know, we have schools and school districts that don't have the right technology to deliver that testing as well as they could. that's one of the reasons that we stepped forward just in the last couple of weeks and announced 24 million dollars additional for technology upgrades in school systems touching about 111 school districts in the state of connecticut. at the same time that we recognized that those school systems are making some of their own investments as well. but we want to support it. another thing that we've done p this the state of connecticut, for the first time we're actually budgeting continuing -- state dollars for continuing education. as we urge people to change their aroach to continuing education -- approach to continuing education from a kind

of large auditorium, you know, you close the school for a day, you headache everybody hear the same lecture and precious little chance for real discussion between teachers and those that are leading the discussion. we're trying to change that model as well to be supportive of the kind of broader and larger change that we want to see made in the school systems across the state. >> so how much per pupil is spent in connecticut today? >> um, it varies widely. from district to district. it is one of the largest state programs, that is a kind of distribution of dollars in the education cost-sharing grant allocation. no district has lost any money since i've become governor, but the vast majority of the additional dollars have gone to those districts most in need. and that is a break with the it's. previously, if you put additional money into the education cost-sharing grant fund, it would be distributed as it had been in the past.

if you got x percent, you'd get x percent of the increase. it doesn't make sense to do that when you realize that you have much bigger problems in a much smaller number of districts that you have to find a way to turn around. and focusing that turn around is very important. and part of that is dollars. tsa not to say that every dollar -- that's not to say that every dollar, in fact, i'm not saying every dollar has been spent wisely, but we have to hold ourselves accountable the how we're going to spend those dollars from this point forward. >> so, for instance, what is per -pupil spending in hartford be or new haven today? >> you know, i have round numbers, and so i don't want -- you know, we're spending in excess of depending how you read it and what you put into those expenses, well in excess of $12,000 across the board. some districts are spending substantially more than that, some districts are spending a little less than that, but i think if you looked at kind of

ap average and, again, there's two different ways to measure it. so that 12,000, if you measure it a different way, it could jump to 15 or 16. but we're spending a lot of money on education in connecticut. >> and do you think that figure out to be higher across the board? >> i think it ought to be higher in certain places. again, i'll go back to this different districts face different problems. so if you have a large english learner -- non-english learner population that you have to bring along, don't be surprised that you'll find that smaller classrooms will be helpful. and smaller classrooms cost more money. or that a different model might not work better:. if you're dealing with issues of poverty, and poverty, as we know, is concentrated in our society in certain districts, some of those are rural, many of those are urban be, don't be surprised that different intervention, educational

intervention mod to els need to be -- models need to be used, and in some cases those are more expensive. on the other hand, we ultimately have to hold everybody accountable for how they spend every dollar and make sure they're being used wisely. i referenced a little while ago when we looked at the 30 be low performing districts, in almost every one there were schools that could compare across the board in the state of connecticut. but what we found is those models weren't being replicated in the other schools in that same district. well, we don't have as much money, or that costs more money or we can't do it or there's some reason to argue that that's not a model that would work system wide. i tend to believe that we actually know what works. we know that longer school days work, that's why connecticut is in partnership with the ford foundation on extending hours of

operation. we have school, three school districts that are actively engaged in adding 300 hours to the curriculum every year by extending days. i visited two of schools in one district, great success. numbers rising much more rapidly than anywhere else by and large, i shouldn't say anywhere else, but almost on an average basis rising substantially faster than just about anywhere else. test scores in the commissioner network schools all saw increases. so we know it works. we just have to replicate what works as opposed to our failures. >> and as you mentioned, you know, one of the points of concern is, well, in order to scale what works, additional dollars, in colorado, of course, a month ago there was a billion dollar proposed levy led by mike johnston, state senator. had gotten it through the legislature, it went down in a

2-1 defeat as a referendum. curious if you think that speaks to public appetite for additional education dollars at this point? does this have any relevant as you think about it this connecticut? >> if we hadn't done -- i've been governor for three years -- if we hadn't done what we did to support education, we would have lost thousands of teachers in the state of connecticut, thousands of professionals in our systems -- >> and by doing the things to sport education, you mean -- >> additional dollars, at the same time driving a reform agenda. doing both things. you know, going to a school system like a new haven or a bridgeport or a new london or a new britain and taking teachers out of the building and not replacing them is not a way you're going to drive higher achievement. and so we came up with a different model, and that was to concentrate where we were going to spend additional dollars on those districts that were by various, you know, models had

higher and proven need. and i think that's a very big break with the past that isn't fully understood what the long-term implications of that are. >> you know, one of the proposals you've put forth is an expansion of pre-k. obviously, this has been a talking point nationally. curious what vision you have for expanding pre-k in connecticut. >> i've been a pre-k for a long time. when i was major in stand tord, i chose to move stanford in the direction of being in a position to guarantee all 4-year-old children a pre-kindergarten learning experience regardless of their parents' financial circumstances. so what we did is we changed the dynamic. we weren't going to add an additional year of kindergarten and, therefore, be the educator of every child who would enter pre-kindergarten running it exactly the same way. we went to a hybrid model where we actually turned to a not for profit agency that had overseen a child care as well as

educational services this the community, and we said we want you to run the program. we took an old building and retrofitted it so that it could house upwards of 3-400 3 and 4-year-olds. everyone who got signed up had to have some skin in the game, so they had to take some amount of money out of their pocket, but we made sure that was scaled to their income. we provided additional services. we helped parents learn english. we provided medical services. we fed the kids. and lo and behold, it works. we know it works. longer school days, starting education earlier. it all works. having a larger vocabulary the day you walk into kindergarten than you would have otherwise leads to additional success. it's less time spent catching up. i used to explain it the following way, you know, imagine

you're a first-year teacher and you go into a class room, and half the kids have had a pre-learning, a pre-kindergarten learning experience of quality, so they know their numbers, their letters, their colors, they have pre-reading or literacy skills and the other half the kids don't. and then you ask that teacher, well, so which group are you going to spend more of your time on? and the reality is we shouldn't ask the question. because everybody should have that. we know it works. and we know it's one of the best ways to close what is a gigantic achievement gap at the end of 13 years by closing it at the beginning. i think it's the biggest bang for the buck buck. >> and as mayor how did you find the resources for the programming? >> well, we changed the model so that we could actually provide the experience to more children at less cost can. so if you -- cost. so if you think about most school-run or school district-run programs, they're very expensive models.

it's the reason we haven't exp paneledded those models in just school districts. it was just too expensive, and it was seen as a luxury as opposed to a necessity. we don't can, you know, we require everybody to have kindergarten through 12, we didn't require that everybody have pre-k, and so once you change the model and you get to a more cost effective model, i think, you can win that argument. >> what are a couple of those key pieces to make it a more cost effective model? >> well, understand, you know, a little wit about biology, understand about, you know, the given strengths of 3 and 4-year-olds. they're not going to learn for eight hours straight, you know? or six hours. or, for that matter, three hours. the today's got to be broken up. so a tear amount of the day is spent in supporting learning, but not necessarily in instruction. and so do you need -- who's running the classroom or who's running the education portion of the day, i think, is an effective and important issue.

and if you can find a way to supervise those activities to be supportive of learning but not tie up the teacher for the full day, then you get a lot more done. >> so this means more adults who are not necessarily trained teachers, but in supporting roles which makes them cheaper, presumably. >> that would be part of it. it also gives you scheduling abilities, particularly if you have an all-day program paying everyone as a certified teacher for an all-day program may not make sense. >> you know, one last question, then let's open it up. curious if there's any other takeaways or lessons there your tenure as mayor that have informed your thinking on education in the governor's mansion. >> i think that we've got to find ways to make educational spending more effective. and, you know, when i became

mayor of the city of stanford, we had an i.t. department for the city government, and we had an i.t. department for the board of education, we had computers that were aging out before they were installed because there weren't enough people to get them installed in schools. it happened in district after district around the country. we decided to put those efforts together and to work together, and we lifted the technology integration -- now, this is way back in the dark ages of 1995, '96, '97, but we lifted the use of technology pretty substantial hi in a relatively short period of time in stanford. the other thing i found was that when i became mayor of the city of stanford, facilities. now, if you look, if you talk about communities, the single largest investment that almost every community across the country has is in its schools. it's physical infrastructure. it's the most be expensive building. it has a lot of testimonying. it's got a lot of -- technology.

it's got a lot of stuff in the building. but if you then scratch the surface as i did when i was a but mayor in stanford, i realized the guy who was overseeing the maintenance and construction of buildings had a doctorate in counseling. [laughter] and in point of fact that there was not a single architect, there was not a single engineer who actually worked for the system at that time. so finding a way to professionalize that, to save money in the long run by properly maintaining buildings, by running them more efficiently gives you those dollars to plow back into education, and we did that as well. >> all right. let's go ahead and open it up. please catch the eye of sarah or max, please be kind to identify yourself by name and affiliation. and as always, please ask a question. if we're 15 seconds in and i don't see a question coming we'll give somebody else a chance. >> nice to see you again, governor. i remember you when you were

mayor, and we visited stanford. my question really relates to the relationship, kind of piggybacks on rick's last question, relationship between schools and general purpose government. and in stanford you were one of the mayoral pioneers in pushing the kinds of relationships that you just discussed. and my question relates to this philosophy, particularly in light of the profound dem -- demographic changes that are reshaping the state of connecticut. have you been able to take the kinds of initiatives at the state level, bringing the department of social services, juvenile justice, etc., and breaking down the traditional and historical isolation of schools from general purpose government? >> yes and no. we've made some progress, but not enough. some of that you have to affect structural change. i'll go back to early childhood education. we create an office of early child, childhood. we took operations out of four

different departments and put them in one office to be housed within the department of education, but now we have one operation concentrating on early childhood education as opposed to, you know, public health and child welfare and that sort of thing. we have it all together. and i think that's going to allow us to bring a more efficient delivery system onboard for early childhood education. but i -- there is this kind of dynamic, and it's not a good dynamic between general government and education. one will pick on the other and point to the weaknesses of the other, and it happens on a regular basis. in trying to lift people to where they're actually work together hand in hand is very difficult to do and is, i think, i'm finding it more difficult to see it happen across district and community lines than i would have thought. having said that, i think we're making progress, nonetheless. and part of it is just i think

what is really going on and what will push a lot of this is that we're very dependent on property taxes in connecticut to support education. so beyond the education cost sharing dollars that the state distributes, everything else is basically tried to local property taxes. well, those base aren't growing anymore. so seem are actually being force -- so people are actually being forced to find ways to save money and to work together. and i think the folks that will lead this discussion are actually in the communities right now looking at how do you continue to support education when you're ground list isn't growing? it's going to drive some innovation. >> and as far as funding for education in connecticut, over say the next five years, does it look like it's going to be flat? it's going to be down? is it going to be up? >> i think that it's a little early to tell. you know, this has been the slowest recovery from a recession in the post-world war ii era. and i'm visiting you here in washington, but the folks in

washington seem to put the brakes on the economy every six months or so, right? or even more often than that. so, you know, they're not helping. and with respect to real growth in the economy. i think that americans will put more money into education when the economy is doing better or when they confront the fact that defunding education is actually hurting them and their state. and so i think there's kind of a bigger picture and bigger pressures out there that are going to play on this. and then, of course, you also have legal requirements within -- and constitutional requirements within states. we're certainly one of those states that under our constitution we guarantee an education to every child. there have been tests, we have a very famous test in connecticut, shep v. o'neill, to kneel being former governor that -- to o'neill being former governor that allowed for a super

education district overseeing about 41% of the kids in the greater hartford school district and surrounding districts, putting them in different schools than they would otherwise be attending. that's a constitutional answer to an education problem. >> yes, sir. >> thank you, governor. you opined -- >> [inaudible] >> i'm sorry, i'm barry stern, i'm a senior adviser to the -- [inaudible] educational foundation. my question, you opined that we know what works, yet there seems to be a growing consensus throughout the country, including the president, that the weakest link in our educational system is our secondary schools. in fact, the president announced $100 million grant program to try and reinch vent the american high school -- reinvent the

american high school. many people believe that the factory model school that 85 percent of our children attend no longer meeting the needs. are you trying to reinvent the factory model school or reinvent the high school this connecticut? >> i would say, yes. we have a number of initiatives around doing that including allowing high school students to take courses in college, at colleges. in one case, we're actually doing it in a number of places, co-locating schools on college campuses or inviting college campuses to offer courses in the school. i think that all of that's important. i think -- but i'm going to respond to what you said. i think we fail, we fail most of our kids that we fail in education in the early years, we just pay a bigger price in the later years. and so, you know, we all know that a child who's not reading at or near level in third grade, the chances for that child to be

successful are greatly diminishes in the rest of their formal education process through middle school, through high school. so we've got to do a better job there. i think we have to think about education differently, particularly in the high school level. i think we have a lot of kids that are underchallenged, and we have a lot of kids who are overchallenged because they didn't get the initial exposure that they needed to get. so i think building in the ability, building into schools the ability to respond to those two things, i think, is going to be very important for success in the future. and i think looking at college coursework, driving higher numbers of folks who are taking advanced placement courses is going to be very important in that. >> governor, on the postsecondary point you just alluded to, obviously, student debt, college completion rates have been garnering a lot of attention of late. curious if that's something that you've had a chance to tackle yet in connecticut.

>> well, we are tackling -- we're working on it. we've had to raise tuition, like a lot of states have, in the downturn. so as there was less money coming in the door, it required as many states have additional contribution by the student or the parent. i mean, again, i'll go back to washington. the idea that the student loan program in the united states is designed to make money, $48 billion a year, doesn't make a whole lot of sense at the same time that we're talking about how much debt students are carrying. well, the higher the interest rate, the longer you're going to have that debt. that's a reality. and $48 billion in profits, in my opinion, is hard to justify, but the congress somehow has justified that. >> there particular initiatives regarding community colleges? >> yeah, i think, you know, one of things we live with and by as tuition goes up so much support for those who can't pay the full boat and a very high percentage of our students, in-state

students are getting some degree of aid. and making sure that people that for whatever education they're paying for in higher education from a state institution is actually getting real value is extremely important to me. and making sure that we're offering the right coursework that's going to allow a young person from being a young person with little skills to being a slightly older person with real skills is real important. i tell this story about doing a road trip, getting ready for a jobs bill that i wanted to get passed, and i go to a community college in infield, connecticut, had been operating a high value-added manufacturing education program for 12 years, and it had 98-100% placement rates for ten of those years. we have 12 community colleges, that program wasn't replicated in a single community college. makes no sense for a state that is number two per capita in

aerospace, number two per capita the submarine development and construction. in fact, all of our, almost all of our industry that remains in the state of connecticut is high value-added as opposed to low value-added, but we weren't reshaping our schools to be responsible for producing the human capital that we needed to be successful. >> did you find out why not? >> yeah, it was outside box. i mean, it was outside people's educational box. so we now have added three additional community colleges, that mod be el is being used -- model is being used to kind of rethink and rebuild our technical high schools which the state runs. yeah, we're changing that view. >> yes. >> thank you, mr. governor, i really appreciate it. one comment, i want to thank you for all of the safety measures, school safety issues that you've

been supporting and taking leadership on both statewide and nationally. but secondly, and rick alluded to secretary duncan and stephanie simon's piece. has the federal government, especially in k-12, considering the stalemate of esea become irrelevant to the work you're doing, or is there a role that the central government can play that complements the work both your local and state are playing? >> i think -- well, listen, go back to the comment about $100 million grant program or other programs of going -- even if you don't get one of those grants, doing the work to put yourself in a position to compete is a learning experience. and it's driving thought change in school district after school district that enters that application process. i don't -- i think duncan is very relevant in driving the conversation. schools are run on a local

level. in fact, they're not run, you know, the state runs a few schools, our technical schools. we fund some others, but they're really run on a local level. but who's going to lead the discussion? who's going to hold a mirror up to people's face and say, hey, are you really as successful as you think you are? and you, and you refer to yourself as successful if you fail to properly educate 40% of your children? somebody has to ask that question. you know, i've had a long political career. i was not a support supporter of no child left behind as it was originally drafted. i think there were inherent weaknesses, but i have to give bush and kennedy some credit. they finally held up the mirror and said, you know, look, look at these results. how can you get up every day and continue to have that the way you're supplying this most important governmental service?

so i don't, i don't think washington's irrelevant except when it makes its irrelevant, and i think washington can help lead discussions, and this is one of the few areas where i think they've actually had a very positive impact of late. >> sir. >> hi, jen alexander. governor, when you were working on the 2012 legislation, you went out all across the state of connecticut and really took it on the chin. >> who did? [laughter] >> time and time again and had to work with, frankly, a reluctant legislature in 2012 and then again in 2013. can you talk about using your office to pull not just the legislature, but all the various constituents along to a final resolution? >> yeah. i've had to do that a couple of times on different issues, and, you know, inheriting a state with the largest per capita deficit representing 17% of total revenue and, therefore, having to go in a different direction when a lot of states

were simply saying we're going to cut, cut, cut, actually realizing our gap was too big, it add to be a combination of the two, i went out on road, and i got beat up. but somebody had to explain what we were trying to do. and when it came to education, i did that as well. and there were a lot of people mad at me and, you know, folks spending a lot of money to try to defeat an organized effort at school reform even though they supported certain aspects of it, you know? it was the total picture that they didn't want to see happen. they might carve out a corner that they liked, but it was the total picture. somebody has to be the leader, somebody has to have the discussion, somebody has to bring the discussion to the communities, and somebody has to demonstrate to members of the legislature that, you know, you mean business, and you want to work with them, you want their input be, but you need to change direction. and i'll go back to this, you know, hartford be, new haven, bridge forth, new london, failing to properly educate 40% of your kids, you can't succeed

as a state when you're doing that. and when you look at connecticut demographically as one of the older states and one of the more rapidly-aging states, you throw away 20% of the kids in the school district, you're throwing away your opportunity. somebody had to say that, and i felt that that was my job as governor, lieutenant governor, as you know, was there by my side most of those times. somebody had to make it okay to get the job done, and i was more than happy to do it. and then i had to do it a third time on a gun safety post-sandy hook where i felt that the proposals were languishing in the legislature, and i stepped forward and outlined what i thought was common sense gun safety legislation, and, you know, i think 12 or 13 of those town hall meetings across the state. got yelled at by a lot of, you know, gun enthusiasts, but somebody had to go out there and have the discussion.

that's part of leadership, you know? and i've never shied away from that. >> governor, when you're talking to your colleagues who are seeking to push the same kinds of legislative packages that you were able to successfully push in connecticut, are there particular takeaways from your experiences on gun safety, on the education package that can, you know, that might be useful to folks in other contexts? >> well, i mean, i think there is a -- i think some things are harder to do as a democrat and some things are harder to do as a republican, and i think education reform generally has been a harder thing to do as a democrat with a democratic legislature. that was the real test in connecticut. i referenced earlier massachusetts really getting into school reform far earlier than we did. it was a contest between governors and legislators in that state of different parties. i had to do it, i had to bring everybody along.

my predecessors had been fairly inactive on education reform efforts in the past. so i had to, you know, fly in the face of what many would consider traditional constituencies for a democratic office holder which also meant that slowly but surely we have to bring those folks on to this effort. you cannot do top down. it's not going to work. it's got to be a combination of leadership, getting buy-in, getting implementation going and staying at it year after year after year. the prior question with reference to '12 when we got the package passed and '13 was some folks tried to undo the funding for the package in the last legislative session. i wouldn't let that happen. and, in fact, i made it clear that if that happened, i'd veto whatever budget it was attached to, and we'd be back over the summer working on a new budget. and ultimately, we got what we all needed, and it's about leadership. it's about trying to do the right thing for the largest firm of people without invadefinish

largest number of people without invading other people's rights. that's true with school safety, gun safety. you know, sandy hook was a gigantic wake-up call for the united states. not that there hadn't previously been shooting in schools, there had. but we hadn't seen a mass, you know, casualty situation where 20 chirp, 20 babies -- children, 20 babies lost their lives and wonderful teachers and paraprofessionals and other professionals. ..

and we need to get everybody pulling in the same direction together, and that's what i try to be. i probably use the wrong language more than once. i know i have. it's not because i don't appreciate what teachers do. i'm a guy who grew up with a very severe learning disability as well as his coal disabilities. i wouldn't be here but for the intervention of educators, overcoming dyslexia as well as gross motor control difficulties is why i'm here today. so i have this appreciation, come from a family of teachers as well. but when things aren't working and they weren't for black kids and brown kids and for kids, and our school system, then you have

-- then you have to change direction. it's not about opportunity, not about saying if all is a line from one kid out of 50 and they do really well, then you done your job because you distribute opportunity, it's not about that. it's about holding ourselves to a higher standard where we measure ourselves by our successes as opposed to our desires. >> governor? >> thank you so much. >> thank you. [applause] >> thanks so much. i want to wish all of you a good return to work after thanksgiving and look forward to seeing everyone soon. [inaudible conversations] >> if you missed any of governor malloy's remarks, you can watch this event in its entirety online. we will be posting it to our

website c-span.org. turning now to the supreme court, "the associated press" reports the court has refused to consider throwing out new york state taxes on internet purchases. the high court refused without comment to hear appeals from amazon and overstock.com in their fight against the state law that forces them to remit sales taxes the same weight in state businesses be. that again from "the associated press." you can go online to c-span facebook page, share your comments and whether the 112th congress is on track to be the least productive in modern time. join the conversation by going to facebook.com/c-span. later today, 6:30 p.m. eastern we will have live to the hudson institute for remarks by the leader of the french opposition party. he will talk about france's role in europe and in the world and the french position on the nuclear deal with iran.

>> social media is a very old idea. we think that its recent and only people alive today have ever done it but really what i'm arguing is there's a very long and rich tradition of social be that goes back to the era of cicerone, the late roman republic. the point is you don't need a digital network to do social media. if you have want it goes faster but you could do it in the old days. those cicerone did it with messengers running to and fro and other members of the roman elite were all linked to him and they all spoke to each other. very much a social environment that of any other examples that have occurred throughout history. martin luther and his use of templates. tom paine and his pamphlet common sense, and the way that templates were made more broadly up to the american and french revolutions. >> the first 2000 years of social media, tonight on the committee caters at eight eastern on c-span2.

>> -- on "the communicators." >> recently the cia and the clinton presidential library released 300 newly declassified pockets about the war in boston. john gannon spoke on a panel that included former secretary of state madeleine albright, former national security advisor sandy berger, and general wesley clark. president clinton also made remarks later in the program. it's the first time a president participated in a declassification event. >> [inaudible conversations]

>> good afternoon, everyone and welcome to the clinton presidential center. i'm stephanie streett and i served as executive director of the clinton foundation. thank you for attending this historic conference. this event is a first in several respects. it is the first time a president has participated in a declassification event at a presidential library. it is the first time a presidential library has open such a large collection of documents before the 25 year automatic declassification date. it is most appropriate that we are here today at the clinton center, because much of the work and the declassification era that has taken place over the last 18 years is a direct result of executive order 12958 signed by president clinton in april of 1995. today the cia and the clinton presidential library are releasing 341 documents that

will shed light on the role intelligence played in the clinton administrations policy decision during the 1992-1995 bosnian war. these documents l-3 important stories. the first is one of presidential leadership. armed conflict broke out in bosnia after declaring independence from yugoslavia in 1992. the documents depict a newly elected president eager to address the intensifying conflict which showed no signs of resolution. in 1995, the clinton administration's international leadership led to the dayton accord which ended fighting in the region. the second story is one of intelligence support. in june 1992, the cia created the dci balkan task force to coordinate intelligence support to the policymakers on the

rapidly growing balkan conflict. the clinton administration informed by the balkan task force charted a strategic policy melding humanitarian aid, economic sanctions, force and diplomacy. but the path to peace as these documents will make clear was treacherous and the administration relied on accurate intelligence to make difficult choices. the last story is the uniqueness of the documents themselves. this collection represents only a portion of the documents concerning the bosnian war. it is the youngest collection ever released in the 20 year existence of the cia's historical review program. now, before it gives our first speaker today i would like to recognize all of our participant. doctor madeleine albright, former secretary of state and u.s. ambassador to the u.n. dr. albright.

[applause] >> sandy berger former national security advisor to president clinton. sandy. [applause] >> leon fuerth, former national security advisor to vice president gore. [applause] >> nancy soderberg, former deputy national security advisor to president clinton. [applause] >> and general wesley clark, former supreme allied commander europe and director of strategic plans and policy for the joint chiefs of staff. general clark. [applause] >> i would also like to recognize the director of the clinton library. thank you. [applause] >> joseph, the director of the cia information management services. [applause]

>> skip rutherford, the dean of the clinton school of public service. [applause] >> bruce lindsey, the chairman of the board of the clinton foundation. [applause] >> forward slash future of transportation rodney slater. [applause] >> and governor jim guy tucker. [applause] >> it is now my pleasure to introduce dr. john gannon. dr. gannon served as the deputy director for intelligence at the cia. he was chairman of the national intelligence council and served as assistant director of central intelligence for analysis and production. he led the establishment of the dci in the agency balkans task force. he headed the white house team at the department of homeland to get a transition planning office and was staff director of the house of representatives committee on homeland security. in 2004, the president awarded

him the national security medal, the nation's highest intelligence toward. please join me in welcoming dr. john gannon. [applause] >> thank you, terry, very much. i would like to also join in thanking some of the wonderful folks have helped us get here and have supported us since we have gotten here. terry garner, the director of the clinton library. joe lambert, the director of cia's information management and services, and david, who has been our right hands supporter for several weeks on this conference. also, rob and dana, the archivists here at the library

have been super helpful and we much appreciate it. really is an honor for me to be back and to be seated again with people like secretary albright, nsc, sandy berger, nancy soderberg and leon fuerth. and, of course, general wes clark who was the supreme allied commander of europe, but also a very active and indispensable member of holbrooke's team before and during the negotiations that took place at the end of 1995. mikey messages this afternoon coming from the intelligence community and having watched the drama of the bosnian conflict unfold over the three years that it was most insensitive is that the balkan task force was a success, but it was a success only because it was in two-part harmony with intelligence and policy. intelligence policy relationship was managed responsibly and

productively on both sides. and let me tell you that there's a lot of rumors or i should say myths about intelligence community that i want to address as we proceed here. the first one is that intelligence is best produced and assessed at a distance from policymakers so that intelligence analysts are not corrupted by the influence of policy. i think that is more or less bunk. i think what you do from day and look at the documents that have been released, the constructive relationship with policymakers added in every positive way possible to the outcome in bosnia. the other is a more kind of notion about intelligence and that is it's kind of intelligence analysis is a sort of doomsday science that wobbles and pessimism. i recall the famous statement by president lyndon johnson when he described intelligence, he developed the memory of when he was milking a cow on the farm

down at the river as a young man, and he said he would get the bucket filled with pure milk and then the cat would relieve itself in the milk. and president johnson said the relief -- and he met relief in the bad way -- that was intelligence. [laughter] so you can imagine how that hurt our feelings. [laughter] but there is another metaphor that i often hear and that is the famous woody allen comment that we in the intelligence community like to provide options to policymakers, and so we look out at the world and say, we are at a crossroads. one path leads to death and destruction, and the other path leads to total annihilation. [laughter] and we hope you policymakers would be able to the wisdom to choose the right course. but, in fact, in my experience

and the spirits i think we're going to relate today on the balkans is that intelligence is, when it works well, a collaborative enterprise. fast capabilities to bring to the fight but also with clear limitations to be understood by leaders who know that they could ask a lot but not too much of the intelligence business. and by intelligence leaders, we know they can't promise to much. this has to be worked out among reasonable people, and we had that in the balkans. i also want to say as a teacher now at georgetown, when i read a complement about our enterprise, there is a historic backdrop. if you look at the expense of other administrations on other issues like the kennedy administration on the cuban missile crisis, high marks. not so much on the bay of pigs. president johnson on the arab-israeli six-day war in 1967, again, a gold standard. not so much on vietnam or the

battle of the crisis in the dominican republic. the nixon administration, it is actually easier to talk about successes with the relationship with intelligence than it is, because there were so few, than there is to talk about the failures. president carter on the arab-israeli peace process, tremendous achievement there. much less so on iran. the reagan administration, very positive reviews on its soviet policy. not so much on the middle east or iran. the george h. w. bush administration, i think had very impressive achievements in its relationship with intelligence on eastern europe and the collapse of communism there on the ussr, the beginning of the implosion of the soviet union. on the middle east where invested in reviving the middle east peace process, a success. a tremendous, busy, challenging agenda which that administration did well.

i will hold my fire on the george w. bush administration because i think history will have to redo that, and i'm not confident that the grades will be very high there. the balkan task force was established in 1992 for a very simple reason. if all of you who made a phone call, and by the way, you make a phone call to the intelligence community, he had a whole bunch of technical agencies, analytical agencies, if you have a pressing need and you want to get that intelligence community to help you, you need to know how to make it work. when we talk about establishing the balkan task force we knew the complexity of the issues in the balkans were virtually unprecedented or most of our experience. this is going to be a tough road to hoe. so we wanted to simple by the relationship with the policy committee. so we wanted, if you make a telephone call where you need a service right away, you call, you get that nice electronic

lady who tells you, we will give you six options and you pick one and then six or seven buttons you push that may or may not get health. we wanted to eliminate that and make it personal. so that a person could call the balkan task force and get a response. we discovered the effect within the intelligence community was that our analyst became much more aware of the mission that the policymakers at. the broad issues that they had to cover beyond the kind of narrow disciplines that these folks came from, and it was really a delight to watch on the collection side where a policymaker would have a critical issue where they need help from a technical collector, and one of our balkan task force folks could actually put the person in contact with the collection agency so you could refine the requirements so that the policymaker to get what they needed.

so again, bringing all of this into a collaborative relationship i think was the beginning, and ultimately the maturation of that process was responsible for a lot of the success that we enjoy. but i do want to emphasize that -- i always resist talking about the intelligence community in isolation. because none of this success would've been possible without the engagement on the policy side. so dick holbrooke obviously was a strong influence, almost on a day-to-day basis in what we did. i described it as the wind in our sails, but sometimes the hurricane at our picnic. he was usually ahead of where intelligence was and wanted it to go further. so he was a great commander of intelligence. i wish sometimes he shared more information on his side than he did, but i understood that there were reasons that he held back.

but the rest of his team, and i do want to -- the rest of his -- dick was a bit flamboyant maybe in the way that he conducted himself, and i don't mean that in a negative sense. but he had a team that was really a bunch of modest workhorses. people like bob fraser, nelson drew, and then joe came from dod to join dickstein. and be on that -- to join digs team. then within the national security team, always tony lake, sandy berger, nancy soderberg. these are all folks who made it very -- not to say they didn't put demands on us, not to say that they were not critical at times of what we delivered, but they were always collegial, respectful, and they made it work better than it would have

otherwise. leadership is so critical to making that intelligence policy relationship work, and we have that leadership from the national security and the clinton team overall. the production that the balkan task force put out went across a range of is almost unprecedented to my crude. we had to fall the state of conflict and it's always a great interest -- interest to people grethe way to assess a very complicated set of leaders. slobodan milosevic is probably the best known for very difficult personalities, very difficult relationships and i think right down to the date it was actually difficult for the policy side to deal with those leaders and for us to provide support. but working together with that very reasonable group of people on dick holbrooke's team and the national security council team,

i think you'll see in the documents that have been released thus far a great deal of mutual support and collaboration. so we also had to deal with particular relationships of countries like russia, hungary, turkey and greece in the balkans, and that was a complicate challenge. we started off with kind of a dismal order of battle situation that we had to mature, and that actually did a pretty good job of doing. we had an arms embargo. we had an econ and financial sanctions. we had to provide conscious support for mapping, and we did actually produce some pretty good technology to help with the effort. and even on meteorology, because in the humanitarian support area, it was so important to be able to predict weather, and we tried. sometimes we got some criticism for the science behind it but it was helpful. i can even recall when we're trying to determine that once

whether the humanitarian need we be in jafa, we actually use imagery to look at the rooftops as the winter came on and made a determination that where the rooftop showed melted snow, there was probably someone living there. a crude measure but we had used every tool we had, and that was just one of them. so if you look at the documents that have been released, and my own recollection of the work that we did on the balkans, there tends to be a guarded and kind of skeptical regard. it was in president johnson's soiled milk, but it was cautious. and the argument i would make there is because the issues with the difficult. caution was called for in almost every case. so when we looked at the launch of the u.n. protective force in 1992, the margin of the arms embargo and the cease-fire in

the former yugoslavia to the early stages of the un's economic sanctions which were imposed in may 1992, to the eu's peace plan in early 1992 to the peace proposal a year later, to schemes for the delivery of relief supplies which were a constant source of discussion within the policy arenas, to the un's declaration in 1993 of the six muslim safe areas. and to the contact groups, that was the u.s., uk, france, germany and russia. their plans for restoring peace process in 1994. when you look at all those things we covered, there was a skepticism because we were reflecting the real obstacles i think the policymakers were facing. but in retrospect i wouldn't want people to know, as i do, that the balkans task force and the people running it pulled out all the stops to bring all the

capabilities and intelligence to help policymakers to overcome those obstacles. so we may have a reputation for skepticism, but we should also have a reputation for doing everything we can to defeat those who are skeptical. i want to just mention quickly to papers that were done, a famous paper done back in october of 1990, a national intelligence estimate from the national intelligence council, which i had the privilege of heading later on. it predicted that yugoslavia would cease to be a functioning state, and ultimately two years, and that was a kind of controversial -- not controversial statement within the intelligence community. it did generate some conflict on the policy side but not really much because the bush administration was really not -- i did not notice if the administration was determined

anyway to anything in the balkans for the few months that they had remaining in office. but it had a second key judgment which said that there's little the united states and its european allies could do to preserve yugoslavia unity. and that is when i was interviewed in the study on this back in early 2000, that is a kind of statement that we really need to look at carefully as it produces intelligence. because, in fact, it was wrong. the united states did intervene and the united states -- boston is in independence day today. it would not be had the united states not have intervened with european assistance in the way that it did. so we didn't really look at alternatives industries way, and partly because we were not being asked to do so by an administration that was not going to intervene. so the key issue for us has to be that we do need to look at those, and i think we're doing that much better today.

because there were issues of spillover we didn't look at. if we just let yugoslavia alone, it would've had impact not just on the six republics of yugoslavia that hungry at a time when we're dealing with the restructuring really of a whole security architecture of europe, border issues would've been affected. you would have seen the countries of the balkan region and european region affected by the disaster that would have occurred. so the intervention ended up being a very constructive policy. i think we do now look much more rigorously at alternatives. but a second one i want to mention is a case of when i was director for european analysis, a couple of e-mails came to me. one was an imagery analyst. that was before the nga was established and worked closely with us and the director of intelligence. ted holtz was his name and he was a very dedicated, on his own

initiative, working with director of intelligence analyst, decided to go through all the archival imagery of bosnia, and the goal was to see what that imagery would tell us about the accountability for ethnic cleansing. and when he finished, or they finished, the work, it showed that if the pattern, going through several hundred villages in bosnia, was that the orthodox churches and institutions were preserved. muslim and in some cases catholic institutions were destroyed. and the result of that assessment was that, that we asserted that about 90% of the ethnic cleansing was the responsibility of serbs. now, within our own analytic community there were some people who said hey, we know this. this isn't news. but it had a great impact and i knew it had an impact public because i was getting calls and

complaints. .. and just some talking points before we actually published it, he brought us into the con friends room in the state and send down some paintings and called everybody in because he knew where it was going. he though saw that a brilliant s that something was going to be useful. he said to me and i remember precisely.

he said john, i know what you've got here is true, but i want you to take it over to the pentagon. of course, walt whitman and -- receptive and joe, highly complimentary of the work that was done. so that was an example -- this wasn't a dramatic strategic piece of work. it was very much the here and now look at where we are but doing it with the benefit of imaging in a way that really i did think at least influenced -- it wasn't determinative but it was a positive influence on the d-day to ultimately led to a resolution in bosnia. but i want to say that there is no story that tested the intelligence more than the post-sanctions regime. and it lasted through up to the

date in the accords in 1995. the unrelenting challenge to policy makers to monitor and enforce this complex economic and financial sanctions regime to transform from the struggling income and that's what it was when the came into power with a major factor to the required sustained intelligence support at every turn. i want to emphasize if you talk as i get to the analyst including the folks on the side, too, in 1992 there were a lot of of sanctions that would be able to make a difference. in the end, they made a tremendous difference. they were a huge level to get milosevic to the conference table. he wanted oil and gas and belgrade at the end of 1995. and i think that if you read a call book blank memoir he wanted

to relieve the sanctions more than he was committed to the greater serbia with regard to croatia. so the success of the sanctions effort on the part of the intelligence was a lot for three things really, the very rigorous, patient, sustained effort that he had on a daily basis reall area we had daily ms on sanctions and the way that he structured the response and also the effort he had established a task force including state treasury, dod, customs and cia and that mary did nicely with the task force that was bringing together all of the intelligence assets. but it is i will tell you it did require the leadership of someone to work.

but for the intelligence side and it required a full scale that means all of your collection assets and all sources of analytics meaning you had the economic and financial analysts together on a daily basis to bring about the result that was achieved on those sanctions and they became the model of success and i think actually changed in my judgment a changed the view among a lot in the policy community about the potential effect on the sanctions. i just want to say something briefly. i think that we took some hits and 1995 was the year for the convergence of both the try and and tragedy. and one of the great tragedies was of course the assault on the safe area where about 8,000

muslims and men and boys were killed and over 20,000 men and women were expelled in just a brief period for over a week 16th of july, 1985. there were questions about, you know, how could this have happened, why couldn't intelligence have predicted it? i will let others speak perhaps more knowledgeably on the policy side of this but my view is i can say with total confidence that we produced and disseminated intelligence as we have it and we were dealing with the dutch peacekeepers who in my judgment kind of played down the threat that the simple fact is that when it came time when we solve the impending crisis coming as i saw i thought the policy side worked overtime to try to get collaboration among the europeans to do something about it. it was a tremendous fear that i detected among the europeans

taking military action that would have and injured their nationals who are already deployed in various places. so when i look back on it, where do you assign accountability for a regrettable and a tragic situation? my younger inclusion is that it is a very personal one. i think it goes with the serb, the serbs out of belgrade. politicians and knowledge area leaders who recognize, which was clear to all of us, the fragility of the international peacekeeping commitment to the safe areas, and they made a calculated decision to cross the delicate line and to commit time for in this -- commit horrendous war crimes.

that's what i saw on the intelligence side is people who were working seriously to try to deal with the situation. we simply didn't have adequate intelligence on the ground and we did not have an international network ready to increase support to the safe areas. that vulnerability was exploited by the serbs. then an interesting case in 1995, in august just a few days again in august when the croatians expelled a large population of ethnic serbs who were living in what had been a part of croatia. an interesting debate that we had with dick holbrook who was insistent on the need to encourage the serbs, i'm sorry, the croatians to proceed with

that expulsion. what i will say about the intelligence side, and this is just to show the kind of conundrum that we get into. on the intelligence side, we saw a serb military capability that was wrong actually that would actually repel and fight against the croatians. that didn't happen. the ethnic serbs ran seriously. we also were concerned about the yugoslav army coming in and we were also concerned that they might have some missiles that could have been used to assault americans. so this was a case, and he does mention in his memoirs twice that we failed to predict this. but from my perspective, it really wasn't a prediction. it was risk assessment and what we said and what he said were

properly weighed out i think by the policy side and the decision was made about in his argument they would clean up the map in a way that would lead more rapidly to peace is probably the right decision. but looking back sometimes, you can't find a better way you would have done it yourself with the limited intelligence we had great i think the warning that we articulated at the time was appropriate even though we were wrong in some of our judgment. then let me talk just briefly about the mujahedin, iranians and other mujahedin forces that came into bosnia. that was covered very well by intelligence from early in 1992 period writer 1995. and we made a conscious effort to try to distinguish on all of the mujahedin fighters that had come into bosnia. we wanted to identify the iranians army of the guardians

of the islamic revolution, the really tough guys and be intelligence officers versus the military force. i think we did a pretty good job of that. but i do get the question why didn't we do more about this if we got that from congress really towards the end of the conflict, not during it. and the issue was i think that's partly the mujahedin was assisting the bosnian muslims in a way and helping to balance their power with other forces that actually was not in violation of the u.s. objectives at the time. and also, our -- when we looked at the order of battle, we judged that they were never a decisive force in the conflict. and of course there was a very wise policy decision in the period of the accords to require that those fighters would be removed as a condition of the

accords. and the president pledged to do that, and we did monitor that not always with total satisfaction, but we did monitor it. the last thing i want to say is on the wartime tribunal. because this is to be a very interesting issue occurs if you look at the wartime tribunal, it is not difficult to understand why such a tribunal might be controversial on the intelligence agency that is asked by the government to assume the risk of working with vulcan officials who might with the help of the same government become targets for prosecution. this reality, notwithstanding, the intelligence committee can't provide outstanding support for the effort on war crimes. david scheffer, with whom i have considerable contact with secretary albright blank choice and 93 to lead the effort to establish a wartime's tribunal for the former yugoslavia and he

eventually became president clinton's ambassador at large for the war crimes. he's written eloquently about his great frustration initially in getting cooperation from across the government and putting in the intelligence community, but he concedes that by the time the then deputy director george tenet is getting a lot of help in the balkan task force also and that situation was turned around. i can say having watched the people coming and i can mention that jim is one of the analysts, they pursued that issue with commitment and passion that deliver positive results. in conclusion let me say on the balkan task force i think it represented a major successful effort to integrate intelligence collection and analytic capabilities for the benefit of policymakers dealing with what we saw as a high level of complexity and uncertainty and a rapidly deteriorating the conditions in a volatile region of europe and also provided an annotated platform for the

continuous real-time policy input to drive intelligent priorities and refine the impact. coming in the wake of the iraq task force that was controversial in terms of its performance in the first gulf war actually was asking for a level of collaboration across the agencies unprecedented in the history of intelligence. i think a lot of the credit goes to the policy folks that work with us but that level of cooperation was achieved. the relationships of the policymakers remained strong and i watch this every day. even with a disagreement on important issues ike in 1995 and other issues that came up because people were ready to collaborate. the early investment in collaboration on the part of the policymakers of the clinton administration and the intelligence community paid off in the resolution of minor

difficulties before they could become big problems. the btf as i look back on it now and is evident and no other documents are intended to make policymakers options and reduce the uncertainty they faced in making decisions. the btf, i'm proud to say, saw itself as an interval part of the u.s. government team. for now, it is starting my own comments it is good to be my pleasure to introduce dance he soderberg, the deputy national security adviser number three, the actually number three but actually she was number one in terms of the people who liked people from the intelligence side onto the policy side. nancy was unstoppable, always called. she could leverage pretty heavy requirements but she always did it with such class and sympathy for the work of intelligence folks area she went on to become the special representative for the political affairs at the u.s. mission to the un with the

rank of ambassador she did do some very important work on northern ireland. she was a foreign-policy adviser to the ted kennedy and i think mayor bloomberg on the right? an interesting combination. and she's written a couple of books, good books, and she is now working on the president's declassification efforts. so she knows a lot about those documents. so, welcome, nancy. great to be working with you again. [applause] >> we have an exciting panel for you, to give you first hand a chance to hear from those authors of the many documents that you have had out here. we are going to have a brief discussion from that of an

albright -- madeleine albright. i won't take your time and introducing of them again. we will have a little discussion with them and then take a few questions from the audience and then wrap it up abou around 3:0t which point we will have a short break and then the president will come so let me invite the panel to come up. [applause] >> is this on? first we want to thank the clinton library and obviously stephanie streett.

the peace process is something that we are all proud of. it one of his many lasting legacies. and the legacy is today bosnia is a multiethnic and democratic state, and i think that the team here on stage these herbs in large chunk of that credit, and most importantly, president clinton. but the unsung hero is the intelligence community. if you look at the over 2,000 pages that have been released, hats off to the historical collections division at the cia chairing another declassification effort. it's not easy to do what you all have done. so i want to give you all a round of applause for what you've done. it's extraordinary. so thank you for that. [applause] i would ask joe to stand because

he is really deserving the credit for today's conference. [applause] were it not for the government shutdown, we would have him up on stage. but he's a private citizen today. but this is really -- stephany mentioned this is the youngest collection of documents ever released. and that makes us feel a lot younger since this was almost two decades ago. but i think that what you heard from john gannon is how hard all of this is to do and how many hours went into supporting the policymakers and how important it was for the policymakers to have direction in a conversation with the intelligence community when they worked together it really makes a huge difference. reading through these newly released documents it brings me back around the corner in the 1992 campaign where the headquarters were not far from here. and i are member very distinctly

than the candidate clinton and actually candidate vice presidents to be al gore calling into the headquarters wanting to do more in bosnia. the instinct of the president and the vice president was we inherited a situation where the u.s. had real interest. the previous administration said we don't have a dog in the fight. the president absolutely thought we did and worked from the day he took office to move that forward to it so that but i wao do today is walk you through with the participant onstage with me what it was like both to try to put the united states in a stronger leadership position on how the president did that and other senior officials did that and also how they use the intelligence. so i wanted us to start with sandy berger who was deputy national security adviser in the first term and national security adviser in the second term but is also one of the first people on president clinton's the 592 campaign. so he saw the evolution from

well before the president had won the election. he saw firsthand how the president wanted to lift the embargo, get involved and have the u.s. leadership. reading through these documents, they are really fascinating and talk about how would we have next steps early on and the possibility of a serbian condition and what would we do if that happens? what we put troops in if it succeeds? if it succeeded, great but the bad news was we have to put troops in there and that he dates about lifting the arms embargo. i think probably the most interesting for me is the lead up to the bosnian endgame leading up to july of 1995 where the president finally decided he was going to take charge and drove the process of the marriage of forcing diplomacy that ended up in the dating peace accords. in july of 95 you write to your

colleagues including to madeleine and two leon and i is only nano come in other words they were not able to veto able to make copies for their staff and it was held closely so this is one of the crown jewels of the intelligence documents. and it is right after the fall where we are talking about perhaps before the un operation would collapse and contemplating airstrikes. basically jettisoned. i wonder if you could pick up the story and kind of walk us through what happened and how leadership was the key element at the end. >> thinks nancy. the bosnia story i think is compelling and interesting and quite relevant even today as you read it. before i get to 95, it would be useful i think to put it in the context of what went before because it ruled me make sense i

think in that context. as a candidate in 1992, governor clinton had quite a strong posture on bosnia. as nancy said, the bush administration coming off the gulf war basically said had no dog in the fight. the president of then governor clinton thought we did both for humanitarian reasons and because he thought we had a strategic interest in the conflict in the middle of europe. he gets elected and there's a lot of intense debate which my colleagues appeared will remember in the administration about what the proper course is. our military folks are quite opposed to the robust posture. they did not think that air power could be used for limited purposes. the doctrine of overwhelming force that was prevailing at the

time was not allowed for this kind of activity. and so the president basically decided he would send secretary christopher off to europe to try to convince the europeans to lift the arms embargo against the bosnians and use the air power to strike against the serbians. the europeans hit a stone wall. they said this is a european problem, go away. this is not an american problem. stay out of our business. and for the next two years, it was a very frustrating situation with on-again off-again negotiations with six instances where the air power was used in a limited way for the strikes

for various peace plans that were never viable and growing brutality from the serbs, atrocities and are not really being able to push the process forward. and that leads up to the moment that nancy set up in the question. i should say right before this moment, and i know matalin will talk more about this and john as well. they went into one of the so-called safe areas in bosnia, supposedly safe areas. the dutch were protecting it. the dutch flag. they called it a airstrikes and big up there three days later and keystroke to tanks.

and 8,000 bosnians were massacred and thrown into the mass graves and matalin bio .-full-stop that story. this was all more than we could bear. i was in my office in mid-july and i got a call that the president would like us to be on a parting agreement. now, that was a real disconcerting because i didn't think he was one of the challenge. so i went out and nancy was there and that morning -- the day before sherlock had proposed a 10,000 person rapid reaction force that could go into bosnia and rescue people. it was totally impractical, but it was action. it was proactive. and the president said to us why don't you give a better idea is?

why don't i get new options? at least he has new ideas. and basically, it turns out that in fact we were working on the endgame strategy, small groups were working on it at that point and this accelerated that process. the endgame strategy is actually was that the united states and president clinton would take over the bosnian enterprise. it involved one last high-level negotiations with melissa fetch and the muslims and offer on the table take it or leave it. if melissa fetch turned it down, we would go to the un and push the force out of the country. we would have been left the embargo, bombed the bosnians, train them and use airpower. but most importantly, the

president committed for 25,000 american troops to force the peace. you have to understand something. at this point, 3% of the american people thought that bosnia was an important u.s. foreign policy interest and the president's approval rating on foreign policy was 34%. this is not an expedient decision for the president. he believed that we had to act. it also flipped the decision-making process to up the deputies. this turned it upside down. he took it to the president and he decided it and moved it down to the principles. and i must say the only principles that approved this was matalin and leon and the

folks. not anybody else at the time. he was working very hard with his military colleagues. we've been dispatched to tony to go to the europeans with a very different posture. the posture was we are going to do this with you or without you. and the europeans set with us. and so, but to most of the gene turned it down. a few weeks later he bombed sarajevo and 11 days of intense in bombing and 60 targets and at one point at the un asked us to pause the bombing and went back to melissa fetch and dick holbrook sent a classic message send bombs for peace.

the bombing continued. and after 11 days, a valuable part of this team melissa fetch hired and then two weeks later, the peace conference at the air force base where holbrook and general clark and others were extraordinarily brilliant and hammered out what became the date in peace accord. so the basic lesson it seems to me in terms of the force to diplomacy and the contradiction to the posture that some people have taken at the beginning. i think it is also a lesson about american leadership. ..

of intelligence community working with policymakers. it was really seamless. and, john, you understated it i think. it works best when the policymakers ask the right questions, and the intelligence community is close enough to the policy that they no what the policymakers need.

and there was a daily videoconference at the working level, and whether -- the whole range from understanding the extraordinarily complex dynamic of bosnia, the religious, historical, dynamic monitoring the flows of arms and people. the economic embargo, which leon, was like a puppet master. a brilliant exercise of using sanctions to squeeze at the micro level. basically who are milosevic is ladies and what did they by for lunch? how do we keep that out of their hands? unbelievable, cooperation between leon and the intelligence community. the war crimes, at dayton, and

west conduct more but very sophisticated cartography. it was all about maps. where the line will be drawn. meteorology so we're able to know what the winter was going to look like in bosnia for humanitarian reasons. john spoke about the iranians and mujahedin which infiltrated into boston. getting rid of those. it was really extraordinary. it's a classic case of cooperation. >> thank you. let me now bring in leon fuerth to is vice president gore's national security advisor, and really drove the sanctions policy to a level that has never been matched before or since in terms of garnering the international efforts to try and have sanctions take a bite and to make sure our policy works.

is work really to change the course of history and the balkans, and don't think his story has been told well enough. glad we have a chance to talk out today. secretary albright's oral history and ambassador richard holbrooke college of the crown jewel of the policy. this is taking a sanctions. [laughter] -- making of sanctions. he is a quiet man. he would only speak when he had something interesting to say, and often very unique and we all remember those meetings after meetings. one of the memos was from you, leon, to the principles in march of 95. so about six months before the and again, saying that the sanctions enforcement is gradually degenerated utc day -- he said the key question is what it makes sense for the u.s. government to press others to push milosevic towards the end

of a negotiated settlement. umno talks about problem areas like flagging european support for sanctions, still reaching the service through italy's reach. talked a little bit about how you did it, how you drove the most important sanctions enforcement ever, want to relationship with intelligence community was, and how as milosevic changed his strategy did the intelligence change with it so you could make sure that the sanctions were as loophole free as possible. >> generally speaking, i can remember three questions in a row, and that was five. [laughter] so you going have to remind me by choosing from what i forget, which is still important to answer. i had a peculiar background

coming into this situation. my first assignment as a foreign service officer, because the u.s. balance of payments were running in the wrong way, was to be assigned to get your of intelligence and research in the state department while all the unmarried officers from my class were sent to vietnam. i learned an awful lot about the craft of intelligence from the work that i had to do in that office. later, i wound up on the staff of a house select committee on intelligence, and learned an awful lot about how the system works and how to draw it for word -- forward in terms of willingness to collaborate. and then wound up fast forward another decade or so, with the mandate that the principles gave

and without that mandate everything else would have been impossible. i remember very vividly i showed up for a routine morning meeting and all of you were present, and i was informed that you wanted me to take over the job of trying to improve the effectiveness of the sanctions in the u.s. government, and with other countries. and i passed, you may remember this, that you each communicate with the secretariat's in your department to tell them, in effect, i was friend and not so and they were to collaborate. what happened was that that meant that instead of taking two, three, four, five days to coordinate a cable to get out into the world, it took a couple of hours. which meant that the responsiveness of the u.s. government to intelligence suddenly moved to the point where we could get ahead of the game that others were playing.

but our ability to understand that gain was driven by what we were given by the intelligence services. so this was collaboration with double strength caps, because our system got behind a nation of making these things work. we had the material in the form of intelligence data, and we have full collaboration all the way up through the principled level to respond rather than to watch people run circles around us as they moved monday or other kinds of material into the serbian war effort. so that's really the secret of how that worked your the other of course was to realize that until we were ready to use force, this was the cutting edge of the american response to what

we saw going on in the balkans and in our many meetings on that subject, it always struck me that on top of or behind all of the logistical and technical elements of the debate in the foreign policy and national security issues, there was a group of distinguished americans in the room and they were wrestling with what was right to do in the name of the american people in the presence of something that we all felt was not acceptable. so those are the ultimate drivers the honey get, the effect of this. the other was -- drivers behind it. the basic rule that i learned throughout all of my contacts with that world is that the quality of the intelligence we get is a function of the quality of the questions you ask. the relationship between

so-called consumers and producers of intelligence cannot be passive if it appears to be the best that it can be. it has to be active. it requires that policymakers not regard intelligence producers as if they were selling a utility, flip the switch, lights are on. it has to be understood as a dynamic and creative arts. it has to be treated with respect, and above all, while you do not want intelligence producers to tell policymakers what they think the policy should be, you do want intelligence producers in the room when it is being formed so that they can go out and find the information that policy needs in order to succeed. so there are rules of the road in this relationship that we observed, and the result was a highly motivated intelligence system that went out, not only waiting to be told what to look

for, but was out there forging for what it already understood we were going to need, and producing it, very often ahead of time. so these are human dimensions, a highly competent technical process, but the result in the process, surging ahead of the actual need of policy to produce the information out of which you can create new solutions, and recognize the way in which problems are evolving. that bush a last point, i think. and the ability -- remember, we were dealing with a highly intelligent and reactive flow during this time. and we are often dependent upon the intelligence community to tell us when the tactics were changing. so that we could adjust what we were doing in order to be able to keep ahead of the curve and make the sanctions work as a means to pressure milosevic into dropping his policies, and

finally negotiating. >> is this elian was a meeting after me but he says i don't remember, and then he hits it out of the ballpark, all five points. >> once you jump off the diving board, you remember plenty. [laughter] >> let me turn now to general wesley clark, who was a key military advisor throughout this period. and, obviously, capping the career as supreme allied commander during which the kosovo campaign in 1999, he was the recipient of some of our absolute best intelligence of conducting over 10,000 air strikes against serb targets in operation allied force. really saved kosovo. and anytime he wants to run for president he could do kosovo hands down. they love the president in kosovo, particularly wes clark. but for 78 days that went on and not one allied fidelity. it's a stunning example of his

leadership in the marriage of force and diplomacy to stabilize. but take us back to bosnia. you were at the pentagon at the time, and then on dick colbert's team, and with the team that was actually on mount dignan when we lost bob fraser and nelson -- is standing here? sandy. could you please stand up. this is nelson drew's wife, sandy. [applause] >> and those three are very much in our minds every time we think about this valiant effort to restore peace there and save bosnia. but wes was on that trip and understand from the difficult periods leading up to the end of the war on bosnia how important from a military standpoint the

intelligence was, and we like to hear from the military perspective of both the need for leadership and marrying force and diplomacy and the bosnia conflict, but also from mr. standpoint how important the intelligence piece of that was. >> there's the president, there's the principals committee where sandy and leon, madeleine were. and then there's the deputies committee, and then there's the rest of us who are out there. so i came in as the j5. i was a three-star and they didn't understand how the system works. i came out of the first calvary division. i heard about washington but it's kind of intimidating to come in there spent explain to the audience what j5 is. is. >> j-5 is one of eight staff officers who were the chairman of the joint chief of staff to the general should be here. i miss him. he was the brains behind. and i miss dick colbert and i want to save it. they were to be leaders who are

responsible for so much of what successful policy was. that you know, he set the tone for the civil-military relationship, and he was born in poland. he was always a bit of an odd duck in a military. he had a name that was unpronounceable and unstable because a buddy's name is smith and brown and then there was this guy charlie -- then he had a big brother who was a special forces guy. and he was an artillery men, and he spoke with an accent. and he seemed very smart but he wasn't part of the mainstream people. people were shocked all of a sudden he was picked to be chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. he wasn't a good old boy. he actually thought about things. [laughter] he really did. and the most important thing about charlie was he tried to make it work, what the president did, he not isolate the military

view is, he spoke the thoughts of the principals and worked with those thoughts and tried to craft military support for those. i think that's fair, right? he was constructed. i would go with him to meetings, j-5, i went to countless meet with time on everything from arms control to whatever else. he was acutely sensitive to try to understand the nuances and make things work. nowhere was that more clear than in bosnia. bosnia was a tough lift because we came out of vietnam, and we don't like wars. in the united states aren't especially. then we went to the gulf war and we had to force general schwarzkopf to take seventh core. so we end up with 500,000 troops. it was the epitome of what general colin powell calls decisive force. then we come to bosnia. it looks like vietnam baggara

people fighting. you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys. you can't spell the names. they don't have any files if you don't have to pronounce them. it's in a place nobody knows. so as barry mccaffrey testified, my predecessor testified, it would take 400,000 troops to deal with this problem. and that wasn't very helpful. i think that was one of the issues you will have to deal with when you put that number out on the table. so i got there in the spring of 1994, and i had a lot of things on my plate. and i noticed i had to submit this paper to go into the interagency working group that would eventually make its way to the deputies committee through perhaps some issues would be extracted to the principals committee. nobody on my staff had ever been to bosnia. they did know what you're talking about. they were reading the intelligence, john, don't get me wrong. i got a lot of information from it but nobody could tell me what the military dimension was. so i talked to my buddy, the

g-3, jack sheehan, because he was doing most of the bosnian stuff. i said i would like to go over and for this and see. he says, go ahead but you've got to understand if anybody gets involved in bosnia it will ruin your career and you will probably get fired. so not only did you have a problem in the pentagon of wanting to use a lot of force, you have people jumping back from the problem. so this did make it much difficult. we did get the options done and i did get over there and almost did ruin my career after i traded hats. senator dole write the president to say, you're fired. i think sandy may have helped me on that, kept me in my position. it was a rocky road, i will say that. it was funny. charlie told me about a month before i left, he was complaining went in his office. he said anytime you want to do anything in this town, you have to be prepared to take the heat for it. he had been criticized in

congress. boy, i come back and forget about congress but it was all over the "washington post" that i disobeyed some ambassadors judgment. and, of course, i have never been told not to. i wouldn't disobey anybody. but as we move through this process we came to the summer of 1991995. they asked me for some input to this secret tony lake thing. you never hear about which would have been. you get a little snatch of it. tony is going to do something on this. what do you think? what do you think about such and such? i went on a trip with tony lake because at the pentagon we have heard that richard holbrooke might be taking over this delegation, and richard holbrooke has a very tall, long dark shadow on the pentagon. he was known as the kind of diplomat who love to use the

military. everybody in the pentagon is like you've got to stop holbrooke from bombing. he just wants to bomb things. so i volunteered to go to be the holbrooke stopper on the delegation. [laughter] and it was a very long before i realized what an incredibly -- incredible genius he was and how good he was and how sensitive he was, houseparty was that using it. so we went through these negotiations together. i was his sort of right and guy. i was like the public. i was on the puppet masters me. e. watauga what to say in these negotiations. i would say, and the music be careful, milosevic is trying to use you. milosevic would look at holbrooke, and he didn't like holbrooke. he didn't trust them. he was tricky, tricky guy. but i was military. military is like the dog. they are smart, not so smart, but loyal.

[laughter] and so he would manipulate, he would look at me and smiled at me and then smiled, blow smoke at dick and looked daggers at him, you know? you could see him working the delegation. so we worked this through and we have some interesting times on. date, he was very good at using the intelligence. he got intelligence, john, i think you gave him personally -- i'm not sure i got that intelligence because when you're dealing with intelligence you never know what you don't know. somebody always has something else that, you look up there and see how does he know that? because he got limited distribution intelligence. so dick was very, very good, very, very well prepared to a couple of incidents that illustrate this. so when the bombing was occurring, milosevic -- we landed there, because we hunting lodge from belgrade and he said let's take a walk around the

lake. dick and i took a walk around the lake with milosevic and he said this bombing must stop. it's very bad for peace. of course, that's what led to the letter because it was obvious we had them right where we wanted them. when you got your adversary claiming you've got to stop the bombing so he can negotiate, no, send more bombs, right? so we go back the next time and the system is, i have a special surprise for you. i think, maybe a cake or something. [laughter] he produces the two indicted, recently indicted war criminals. so we go into this launch, this is the time the bombs are going on and this is the time to make peace. milosevic and his grandiose way says please, gentlemen, you must agree among ourselves how to make this peace and make this bombing stop. and so we're sitting around this room in the hunting lodge, and before i know what milosevic

leaves. before anything really isn't. dick gets up to leave. and before i know it, i'm left with these two were criminals, and i'm not a trained lawyer and have to be honest with you, they never taught me at west point how to write a cease-fire agreement. [laughter] i knew how to do it in plan. but i didn't know how to write a cease-fire agreement. it was the second night without sleep. one night across the atlantic, one night at the residence, and an all night later this is the third night without sleep. we wrote a cease-fire agreement, and so it was what dick wanted, and he used it. he was very effective because he let me take the heat for the cease-fire agreement, and he could backstopping on it. because if he had done it himself, it would have put the delegation in jeopardy. he was very smart about how he deployed assets, and it did stop the fighting, stop the bombing

and it opened the door for the peace agreement. so we couldn't have been any of that without great intelligence. i just want to say that. i also want to say, john, i want to reinforce what he said about the difficulty of this. you've got to get the military organization on the ground correct. we hav had the military on the ground, so you're saying what company is that? what battalion is that? we've got you in units from different countries, we got served, moslems, croats, paramilitary. they are all jabbering and we are monitoring some of it and we're hearing it from other people. somehow it had to get straight. anybody know the command is and what the role was. can you do know the political level and then the other nations level. it was a huge intelligence load on that. the only suggestion that i had after all that, when i come back on, and i don't know if we were doing this any better, we are not very disciplined in the pentagon at least about

collecting information from people who have gone out. we should be more disciplined. somebody should change to the desk when i came back and said, right down think of everybody you talk to, every personality. tell me the five most important things and give me their strengths and weaknesses. because i do believe that the chinese do this. the soviets did this. the israelis do this. and for some reason, and i think the state department does it. but for some reason in the military, we don't. we just want to know about weapons. >> i bet you'll will take you up on that offer. >> we want to know about weapons so don't get into personalities and details and don't keep track of it. that's the only suggestion as i think back, if we could have done it with everybody we ever met these guys we would have had a library on them. it would have supplemented the current take on the intelligence. >> thank you very much.

now to madeline albright, whose -- who is both a cabinet member and a ambassador, and, of course, the secretary of state in a second term. so it's very aware of how important intelligence is and how important u.s. leadership is. she was one of the earliest advocate for stronger u.s. leadership in the balkans, and i think history is proving quite clear that she was on the right side in history reform anywhere. in the documents that have been released today, they document how she was pushing and pushing and pushing, and there's one that was in february of 93, so we've been there maybe a month, and she's in a principles community meeting, cabinet interagency meeting, saying our policy was legitimizing ethnic cleansing. this is a woman who does not mince words, and call it our

policy college. there's some wonderful quotes in these documents. but throughout the early days of the policy being developed, she was trying to keep the pressure on me to recognize this is ethnic cleansing. we had to keep the process of justice and ending the genocide at the forefront. she was not afraid to put the use of force on the table. ended so early on and repeatedly to some fireworks in the situation room at times. i wanted to start with your role in the crisis a little bit later, and your role at the u.n. and how important the role of intelligence was in shocking the world of the conscious, your adlai stevenson moment. >> great, thank you. it's wonderful to be back your together with assaulting. we really were a team and it's great to see so many people and groups. it's great to see you.

you know, people asked me what i miss most. it's not the airplane. it's the intelligence. because everybody think that having that opportunity every day to have the kind of intelligence that the intelligence community can put together is totally amazing. the problem was when i first began i didn't understand why my briefer would sit there and watch me read. i thought i wondered if she was watching to see if i move my lips when of it. mostly was in order to be able to then get the questions, then begin to move the process forward. before they get, let me just say this. it's interesting to listen to my colleagues, i think it makes a difference what your background is. everybody has a total of it of theirs. mine is completely different i was born in czechoslovakia, edges by accident my father was the czechoslovakian ambassador to yugoslavia. therefore, i understood

serbo-croatian. i knew what the area was about. i understood those things. it's pure accident of history that that happened, that that would've been the major issue that was out there. and that, in fact, we had to do with, along with iraq sanctions we had to deal with it. and i came -- most of my colleagues are younger than i am, and they are very much a part of the vietnam generation. i am a product of munich. when neville chamberlain said why should we care about people in faraway places with unpronounceable names. so we all come with their own background come and i think that it is important as one studies history and decision-making what is it that you bring as an individual, the role of the individual really is different, and i think matters. the other part that i think really matters in decision-making, and these documents really show it, it is

very -- we all argued and that's actually what it's supposed to be about. principal committee, you should have everybody there saying yes or yes or. but it really good national security advisor. nancy has been through all of it. standing was a brilliant national security advisor who made as break the egg in or to really understand what was going on. and that he was okay to disagree. that was the whole point. if you look at the particular documents you can see us disagree. so i disagree. and i came at it from a very different aspect, not only background but also being at the u.n. where i saw more different diplomats than any other american diplomat. you mentioned pamela. she saw more french people but i saw more different diplomats, and every single day people would come up to me and say, your president, who as a candidate said we were supposed

to do something. why aren't you doing something? what is it? we talked about the safe areas and we talked about who was doing what. so that was going on one level. then on another level the europeans were completely obnoxious. because it was in europe, and they at one in the same time were saying why don't you let us do it? and h they didn't do it. so it was a very difficult and complicated aspect. what did happen, which i think is very important, is that it was the marriage of policy and the image. john, you talked about the images. what had happened was we had endless debates about the safe areas, which, in fact, were never really safe. and partially how they were to be protected and then all of a sudden the safe area was overrun. it was hard to persuade people what had really happened. so having gotten the intelligence in a variety of ways in different places, they

were to streams that came together. one was that it was possible to interview somebody that had, in fact, been a muslim bosnian who had survived. a young man that had hidden under somebody's and was able then to come out and tell the story of what he had seen happening. and then we were able to have -- there were photographs, images that showed what it happen. first a lot of people in the field in the stadium. then there had been an empty area. then there'd been an area where all of a sudden you could see people all over the place, and they were trucks taking people out of the. so i've managed through all my friends here to get these images declassified. and i took them to the security council, and there have been all these discussions had happened, how did not happen, what with

the dutch doing what i passed the pictures around the security council, and it was silent as people kind of look at these pictures which told the story and matched the story of the interview that the young man had given, and it was really chilling to everybody. it was an amazing example of how you can use intelligence really to push something forward. it was cut in my adlai stevenson moment, but it was a perfect example of how these two things, the policy and intelligence, came together. it had to be visible in some particular way. so i think that was very good. the war crimes tribunal, you talked about that, very important. i was proud of the things i did at the u.n. but one was one of my early post a great the war tribunal. david worked with me. i have to tell you, i'm usually known as multilateral madeleine, but the bottom line is multilateralism is very hard. americans don't like the word. it has too many syllables and inns in islam.

mostly it is just partnership in trying to get us to go along with the u.n. is difficult but there's no question about it. i think trying to get the country t's degree, the russians are not usually helpful. and were protecting the serbs in any number of different ways. we saw that in kosovo. but basically i think that the question is how you get demobilized. so the work crimes tribunal was a very important part of a really new step in terms of trying to get those that were perpetrated the crimes. very different from nuremberg where this had already been a surrendered power. we knew that people talked about that as a model, whereas the war crimes tribunal for the former yugoslavia was something totally different. it was a very early vote that we took. then the question was how could we prove what was going on? and i think that the whizz

applying some of our intelligence information to them in order to get indictments was a very important part. the difficult part about was that not all the u.n. system trusted our -- or the like our intelligence but they weren't sure, they only wanted to use our intelligence. i think that making a very important issue. i do think that ultimately the combination of the sanctions, and i have to say leon and i really -- you looked for allies within the principals committee, and i've got to say that leon and i were very well allied on this. and the sanctions i think were very important but the indictments were also from the war crimes tribunal. that combination of aspect and then the bombing, and by the way, it was very interesting. i have to say i admired general powell incredibly. arguing with them is difficult as a mere mortal female civilian. [laughter] as he testified in his book that he had to wait patiently to ambassador albright that our

soldiers were not were soldiers, and he then, i called after the book came out and we've actually used force possibly after he left, and i said, patiently? he said yeah, i had to explain to you patiently. you understood nothing. so he sent his book and decided with love and admiration, patiently colon. i wrote him back a note and i signed it forcefully madeline. [laughter] but i think that charlie really did bring a different approach, and i also think as you said, tonight, i think it was his bureaucratic background. i think he came from a different kind of -- there was a time when charlie and i were standing in front of the situation and. he in his uniform and me with my pen, and bob rubin walked by andy said, force and diplomacy. and charlie said, and which is which? but we were very good partners in this, and as saint he said,

force and diplomacy really do go together and i think those are the lessons with the addition you cannot do without the intelligence. and i think that the task force has been an amazing model, and i feel really as somebody that was able to use it in a way that maybe others couldn't in pictures, that really proves the point and i think made the difference. >> i just have one of my favorite moments in the situation room with madeline and general powell. when he was making -- we have to have a half million troops to go into bosnia. and madeline said, pollen, what do we have this glorious army for if we can't use it? in his book he said i almost had an embolism. [laughter] >> patiently. [laughter] >> let me open it up. we've got a couple of minutes for discussion and then we will

save a few minutes at the end for questions. let me just invite -- >> just to say how dynamic of his relationship with the intelligence community is, it was a sunday morning that we went in. the fighting had gone speed tell them who try to is spent the croatian president. the fighting had gone across. the refugees out there and so forth. dick had communicated to sandy, i guess, that it was time to stop the fighting. that it was too dangerous because those of any of the threat of the serve intervention. so he and chris hill went in this he thusman, and i was sent in to see the defense minister. also known as the pizza man because he had become wealthy and opened a chain of pizza restaurant. so we went in there. it was dark. we walked in and intelligence we have, we know where the frontline is.

that we've been told from the previous day. and we walk in and we tell the minister, the instructions are from the united states you must stop and you must stop those forces right now. he said, ambassador holbrooke is giving this to the president right now. so he says stop? stop? were on the last hill overlooking -- the serbs are going crazy. the shooting their own soldiers who were running from us. you want us to stop right now? he said stock right now. so we get back in the plane and so dick has told him to stop. and we say, but look, did we know it was this man? it was this man? we were scrambling to get the intelligence information to put together. i guess dick finally got the

word that it was bad. that we should go to milosevic right now and tell him to surrender. right now. we can save his unit. right now. this is the moment. so we had to go to italy for something. we get into belgrade about 10:00 at night. we've already had dinner. we are in the sedan with the u.s. ambassador, and we say devious ambassador, we say, god, i can deliver going to go this late at night to he's going to make us eat and other heavy dinner. always making us a drink the wine. it keeps you up all night. can we just tell them we don't want to eat? so we know not to talk to anything in the van because we assume it's a bug or we go up, he greets us at the front door at the presidential mission as his gentlemen, please coming. it's late, i'm sure you don't

want to eat this late. [laughter] then, and then he says, so, we are not prepared to surrender. we have some serb generals in charge. he is good men. he will fix this problem. just like that. so you wonder, you know, the intelligence is a competitive business. so we had intelligence. he had intelligence. and i don't know that where he got his intelligence, but it was pretty spooky that night. >> let me just ask you all for one question before we open it up. we're going to end probably at 3:00, so picture questions ready. what comes from listening to you all, your leadership, the president's leadership, great intelligence and the sense of the caa pulling together this task force is very people

driven. in addition to the bosnia task force, it is a bureaucratic thing, either institutional mechanisms that you would recommend to your successors to maybe not have to reinvent the wheel the next time we have a similar crisis? nobody has been invaded rwanda or invade, you know, bosnia, kosovo campaign off the shelf. you always have to invented on-the-fly. the pentagon doesn't sit around and say if this crisis happens here is our plan. intelligence does exactly that. it always this little bit on-the-fly. either institutional fonts for those who come after us to think about in terms of trying to be ready faster and more forcefully? >> well, i think that the issue here is trying -- the hard part, i think, is how to involve as

many layers of the system as possible without slowing everything down. i think that is the problem because i think there's a tendency to get so many layers because you don't know where you're getting the information. and the decision-making gets slow. so i do think that one of the things as i go through these documents is there began to be -- sandy to be -- sandy, you said the pressure came from the top. ultimately, that is what hast to happen is the president has to say, i want a decision on this. and you can write as many memos as you want until you'r you aree in the face but the bottom line is, that would be my sense about all this, is this all changed because president clinton decided that he was going to do something about it and then he got the system moving. >> let me pick up on that. we are here at this wonderful clinton library, and i want to

bring this back to president clinton, if i can. you know, there are more than 40 paces between the situation in the oval office. rarely do national security advisers get fired if things go wrong. but president did get thrown out of office if things go wrong. and i can assure you there was no more appetite for american boots on the ground in 1995 than there is in 2013. we have gone to somalia. we didn't have a great experience in haiti. there was no appetite in the country for putting 25,000, or 20,000 troops into bosnia, even in the context of a peace agreement. most people couldn't tell you where policy was on a map. inevitably, the peace agreement would be shaky. and it was an extraordinarily

courageous decision i think, and we would not have had peace. that was the centerpiece of the in game. because once we said we will be there to enforce it, that was the key decision. then the parties had confidence that maybe a peace agreement actually could last. so it does ultimately come down i think to presidential leadership here, and a decision the president made i think was purely his judgment about what was in the best interest of the united states, of europe. what was the best thing to do in terms of our security and in terms of our values. that's the lesson, fundamental lessons that i take away from the. >> let me open it up for questions. i'm sorry, leon, go ahead.

[inaudible] >> usurer mic. >> real quick, all collectively very time talking about what i was able to do. just remember that i was there on the vice president's dime. and as a senator, two years before he had any inclination or idea that he's going to wind up as vice president of the united states, you will find a speech that he delivered on the floor followed shortly by senator dole. those with a very first to senatorial comment saying that what was going on in the former yugoslavia was not acceptable to the united states and why. and i still hope that we will one day get back to that level of clarity and collaboration across the aisle. because that, too, is essential for success. >> okay. i would say we will take to

questions at a time so we have a chance to get a couple and. and there's a woman right there in the back with glasses. >> i'm carolyn staley, and it personal memory that we enjoyed in our family that connects to this is our daughter was a rookie reporter for abc in greenwood, mississippi, and was home for thanksgiving and asked president clinton issue could interview him in 1995 just after thanksgiving. and he agreed, and he announced in typical fashion to help her little career a long and to get her on to peter jennings nightly news as the lead story that the u.s. would be sending troops to bosnia. and i remember the personal sweetness of that, but also the

gravitas of it, because there had been such resistance to u.s. troops involvement in bosnia. i didn't realize until i read the booklet that was handed us, this was after dayton and that they were sent to help enforce the peace. can you comment on what the dynamic of the decision-making process was to send troops? >> one more right there in the front and then we will take those two. a man with glasses and the bea beard. >> thank you for coming. i'm a student at the school of public service. [inaudible] the argument that distinctions were a big mistake because by putting the arms embargo and sanctions against serbia, it forced every government in the region to get all other military

supplies and economic activity had to go through criminal channels. and he argues that it basically gave rise to modern transnational post-soviet crime like prohibition did in the u.s. i was just wondering, did the intelligence community see that coming? did report on it during 1991-1995 and and given what we know now, do you think that trade off was worth at? >> we have two questions. leon, the want to take the last one? >> well, first of all, we are running this on the basis of a set of declassified documents. and i can go only so far as to the light shed by those documents permits me to go. so that question is another time maybe for another set. but i do want to say that one of

the consequences of sanctions is a disruption among society, including disruptions among the innocent. i mean, when you cause massive inflation through sanctions, it's the middle class that bears the brunt, or the very poor that bear the brunt in any given country. we had to deal with such issues as the availability of heating oil for sanitary and in serbia and elsewhere during the winter months. so they were always consequences that were not desired that had to be dealt with on the fly by the decision-making process. now, if you think that the choice is between effectively operating the sanctions, doing nothing or switching in italy to

the use of force, i would say that one uses the sanctions fully aware of side effects. it's strong medicine. >> madelyn? >> on the sanctions, i actually -- i teach at georgetown and i said foreign policy is trying to get some country to do what you want. that's all it is. so what are the tools? you are not a lot of tools in a national star toolbox. there's diplomacy on one end, and use of force on another, and various gradations. sanctions are a very important economic tool. the '90s was very much not as the sanctions decade. it's very interesting because i think that one of the things i did at the u.n. was to try to make sure that sanctions state on iraq. that was how the cease-fire had been translated into a series of sanctions. those were very kind of ham-handed sanctions, if i might say, the most, the toughest sanctions on any country at all.

what we were looking at with leon's help us to try to really get more surgical with the sanctions on the former yugoslavia. one of the problems that was there, because you put two things together, is that there was an arms embargo that was put on that only hurt the countries that had succeeded from the serbs. the serbs continued to have -- they had a really huge standing military, and the reason that we wanted to lift the embargo on arms was that the others weren't getting any. so there's two different aspects to this, but sanctions are a tool and they do hurt, and the question is how do you turn to what are known as smart sanctions which is a comprehensive once. i think on the other question, sandy, you probably know this, these documents are fascinating. >> let me say, when you are designing a strategy like this,

you start with a question of whether you're prepared to use force and then work backwards. that's the first thing you into. and then you design your strategy to that decision rather than designed it -- rather than designing your strategy, make the threat and then decide whether you're prepared to use force. so once the president made that decision that he was prepared to deploy troops under the circumstances, we then backed up and decided that we could use that as leverage to convince the parties that if they actually reached an agreement, there would be a good chance that the agreement would be used and to go to the other nato -- are 25 or 20 turned out to be part of the 60,000 person made a force that was deployed in bosnia. after a much longer than we thought it was going to be deployed.

that became extreme important to the confidence of the parties that they agreed to some kind of agreement that would end the war. >> so just on the sanctions peace, and analyzing the utility of sanctions as a tool. it's true that you may give some incentives to these networks to form and learn how to smuggle. but i do a lot of work in eastern europe with a lot of declassified jim snow made possible by going into the finals and the kgb files. the book on romania for instructed. we just finished this fall what he goes through this entire analysis. these countries are rife with intelligence services. in eastern europe, one out of every three people speaks for some other nations interest. those intelligence networks then at the end of the cold war, they dissolve, became something else. they begin business networks, networks or influence by russia

today and so forth. you can blame the emergence of those networks on sanctions. sanctions had this much impact on something that was going to be there in any case, and is there in full force today. one thing sanctions did do is it forced these newly democratic governments to lead and take a stand that was not easy for them. and it paid off later on. so in the case of bulgaria and romania during the kosovo campaign in 1999, we required possible and bulgaria not only to keep the sanctions on at that point, they were besieged with requests in serbia to let warner to go through there, and they didn't. they had the means to stop the war material. they cut off any hope of russian war material reaching serbia during that campaign. they did it because they wanted to be nato members lead. they also did it because they

have practiced it with the sanctions earlier. so sanctions cut both ways. they do strengthen government. >> with that i apologize. we have to break because the president will be here shortly and i want to thank the caa for putting this on for the clinton library. and most of all our panel, thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you. i was upstairs watching the panel. i had it piped in. i was thinking, it's no wonder we got a few things right. i have so many smart people working in the administration.

so, i'd like to begin by thanking stephanie streett and the presidential center, and thank you, terry garner and joe lampert for your opening remarks anafter all the work you did to make this day happen. and i also want to thank john gannon and jean to singer from the cia, and madeleine, sandy, wes, nancy, i thought you were wonderful. i loved the panel. i was upstairs hanging on every word. [applause] i presume all of you got one of these books, and if you did, i urge you to read it. if you read this you don't have to pay attention to what i'm about to say. [laughter] you'll know what this day is about. i want to thank some people who aren't here.

i want to thank the late secretary of state or and christopher for the work he did at dayton. i am very grateful to dick holbrooke, and i miss him. he was a massive force. on my birthday in 1995, i walked off the golf course in wyoming to learn that joe, bob andrew have lost their lives in the search for peace in bosnia. and i think sandy for being here today. day, and wes, were on that dangerous road because slobodan milosevic would not guarantee them safe air traffic into belgrade. and so they had to take that

road. wes clark and i have been friends for 45 years. we met at georgetown in 1967. i used to stop through arkansas on his way to some new duty post, and i watched him right. i was terrified that my election as president would mess up his army career, because people would think i had something to do with some advance he made. i never had anything to do with anything he got. he got it all on his own merit. some of it in spite of the fact that we were friends. he's done a lot of things for our country, not nothing touched me more than when he raced down the side of the mountain trying to save his colleagues in a burning car. i woke up in the middle of the night last night, and i couldn't

go back to bed. i really of the bosnia from start to finish. -- we lived bosnia. i miss ron brown and all the people at the commerce department and all the business leaders who died on a mountainside in croatia in a plane crash on a mission trying to rebuild bosnia economically. and i've often wondered if they had lived whether they would've been enough economic progress to melt some of the stubbornness that persisted at the end of the war. i want to thank al gore for giving me mr. sanctions, leon fuerth. and getting into the country, and for being really tough. ..

i'd like to make one general point. one of the things that i tried to emphasize when i wrote my

memoirs is that when you are president, everything happens at once. we finish the bosnian peace accord in november of 1995 in the middle of two government shutdowns. after one and before the next one. quite appropriate for today, do you think? 1995 was a big year. we elected the leader of haiti. we finally got the ceasefire in northern ireland, which led three years afterwards to the good friday accord. which still is held today for good times and bad. we got the bosnian peace agreement. we had the largest handover of land for the israelis to the palestinians in the west bank

that caused my friend prime minister rabin his life three weeks later. ron brown's plane crashed in 1995. oklahoma city occurred in 1995, raising all kinds of other questions about intelligence in the relationship of those who collected intelligence abroad and those who collected it at home, how should be shared and what should be done. meanwhile, boris yeltsin was trying to preserve his position as a true democrat small fee and russia against opponents who wanted a more authoritarian future, either going back to communists and were forward with a kind of ultra- naturalism that would re-create in their own minds a 20th and then 21st

century version of the russian empire. meanwhile, we were also seen the emergence of terrorism justified by islamic politics in certain interpretation of religion. we are to the first world trade in the bombing in 93, remember. the people who are getting pummeled in bosnia were muslims. it was a source of concern to people across the world. i received calls from both the pope and the king of saudi arabia, asking me to intervene and bath and. and i wondered whether that was the first time they've ever been on the same side of an issue. to call broke said it was the problem from. and when we were once discussing

how everything happens at once, the aftermath of somalia, haiti, bosnia, toilet cracked one of the stress lines the whole time he worked in the white house. he said you know, sometimes i really missed the cold war. bosnia in some ways became a memoir for the 21st century. it was the first conflict, which reminded us that the end of the cold war basically took the veil off this mh we were privileged to have come even when it didn't fully comport with reality that there was a bipolar world and is dangerous otherwise come with all these nuclear weapons hanging around, at least it was organized. even our spies helped each other. i used to say, you know, the russians were better off if the

spies in the cold war for america were really good because that way we knew their intentions and we knew they didn't mean to launch a nuclear weapon not us. we were better off if the russian despiser good because we didn't intend to blow them off the face of the earth. i was hard to convince anybody who's life on the line working for the cia or the kgb that if the other side is good as what they did. but we had the illusion that power to the organized constructed, controlled and directed. for good and bad ends. bosnia was a beginning of showing us how incredibly dispersed power was going to get in the 21st century. weapons everywhere. sort of a global version of the extreme interpretation of the second amendment.

they were everywhere. and there's wide dispersal of information and the ability to use than a thousand different ways thanks to social media. cell phones. you can send money and information everywhere in an instant. and so now, everywhere you see these conflicts between the forces of integration, trying to hold things together and the forces of disintegration, the world is interdependent for good and ill. the distinguished author moses 908 book called the end of power, which i recommend to all of you, which really doesn't say there is an end to power. it just says there is an end to power in terms of being able to get it, use it and keep it.

without other people who seem to be powerless messing with your exercise. sometimes we cheer that. sometimes the repo rate. i thought my job, when i got elected, as embodied by the covenant i had to start the cleansing and slaughter in bosnia was to try to create a world in which people who are trying to put together things had a better chance to win than those who are trying to tear them apart. but in which we would not put back together the old dictatorship to care to rest the cold war. we would create a new world of freedom and press. in cooperation that we would share. in a world where everything is happening that one, intelligence

is really important. because it is impossible for any one person. no matter how many newspapers are these operators on the telephone to have real-time knowledge in the areas where you have to make decisions. says a general proposition before we get to what happened in bosnia, which was very special from an intelligence point of view, it's just important. it really matters. look out here started in 1993 when we started working on this. first thing i have to worry about was yelled in less unders each. he had risked his life by standing on a tank in moscow to tell the russian army, you may take us back to the bad old days i meant that you to kill me to do it. the son of a russian immigrant happened to be seated by me at

dinner this summer when i went to dinner with a bunch of our friends. he looked at me as that, did you like yeltsin? he said it just like that. yeah, i did. he got a big smile and said good. my country and its entire history is only produced to true democrats. alexander kareem key and then in linden got rid of kerensky and you've help yeltsin stay. too bad we lost it again, that maybe we can get it back. incredible conversation. suresh of us going broke like crazy at the end of the civil war. the first thing i did was to go to vancouver and put together a $24 billion package so we could bring soldiers home from other countries. principally the politics states. we were talking about this before. the american people were 74% against russia.

what is bill clinton going to canada to meet with the russian leader? we've got economic problems at home. and i also knew i needed his cooperation to keep from coming up the works in bosnia because of the historic ties of the russians to the surface. so we did that. and you heard all this before, but america was basically supposed to stop this awful violence in bosnia. miraculously acting on its own in a place where europe is already heavily involved, only european soldiers on the ground in the u.n. peacekeeping sorcerer no american soldiers on the ground. we were supposed to somehow go in there and fix it and do it without losing a single american life come without killing a

single innocent life and her end is possible without killing anybody on the other side. in an environment where at the time our european friends were pushing a peace plan that all of us thought had no chance in the world to succeed. that made us feel like they didn't want to do it. we had a policy early on. we wanted to lift the arms embargo on the bosnian because the bosnian muslims and in arms and asserts that all the arms be needed, thank you very much. and we wanted the authority to use airstrikes in early 1993. warren christopher went to europe and the europeans told him to go home. they have everything under control. they had no intention of doing this. do we home and went back to

work. remember that later the verdict talked about this in the panel. but we finally got slowly, slowly, slowly more involved with mark permission from our allies to do what they wanted they wanted us to do together. first we got permission to do humanitarian air drops. they made a difference. and then the young went to work on the sanctions at the u.n. supported. then we have a safe area declared a renter beneath those, which worked until it didn't and 95 n. 7000 people were killed there. but they would not agree to raise the arms embargo to lifted because their soldiers on the ground with being danger and are splitting. i was reluctant to go along with senator dole who is a real chance on the issue at the third event that. he wanted to lift the arms of our go unilaterally. keep in mind at the time, there were also arms embargoes on

haiti in libya and iraq. if the arms embargo in the spaces real estate company that had just the reverse impact of lifting and in bosnia, where he would even up the score for the people who were trying to get to keep from getting cluttered. those races would only end the people who are doing the killing. it was a terrible trauma. we had this team that just kept on plugging at it and kept on working on it. and 94, we finally got nato approval or u.n. approval for nato to conduct that is called the dual key, which meant that the nato countries had to agree to do it if the ua.

secretary-general. that was a real problem since russia was on the security council. and we were afraid that the powers that is. or, in february, we finally got easy because there was a no-fly and when nato pilots a shop force are being planned in february 94. it is the first time in his career for nato that nato together had ever cannot the military a leash. resounded area. it was out of the territorial boundaries of the nato members. then, in march, we got a big break. the bosnian and croatian had been fighting each other over

territory, resolve their differences, begins to work together, and began to fight against the serbs and that began ever so slowly to turn the war around. what an arty pin down, just at the authority for the no-fly zone, a safe area, humanitarian effort to the casualty rate for 130,000 in 1992 to the 3000 in 1994. but the political problems in the underlying military capacity to kill people have not been resolved. so, we kept working through 1995. over time, the bosnians and in the dirty fighting after their peace agreement on the control 30% of the land, even not

together they were more than 50% of the population. by the time we started peace talks, they had gone from 30% to 50%. we got a big rig on the ground. from the times our party that principle of peace was then agreed to come the bosnian had about what they had to have under any negotiable peace settlement. that was important. then, in 1995, every and went straight back to what holbrooke called the problem from hell by slaughtering the srebrenica and a second shaving of the sarajevo market, after which nato launched a 21 day, 3500 missile mission campaign itself is airstrikes in seoul straits.

holberg, wes clark and our whole team went about trying to get some agreement on basic principles to open peace talks. in november, dayton occurred. we tried even then to build networks of cooperation. i knew we couldn't own bosnia. this is america, not europe. the dayton talks i think wisely included, as cochairs, secretary of state of the united states. the european union representative and the first foreign minister stomach eaglet you burn off. keep the russians happy.

the result was the peace agreement that said there would be one unified country with an undivided sarajevo as capital. the national government would have control of the foreign policy over monetary policy through common central bank, trade and immigration in each division, the serbian republic of the bosnian, croatian republic would have their own police forces and basically run their domestic lives. then, we had to sell it, including the peacekeeping forces, 60,000, two thirds of which should be supplied by 25 other countries, one third by the native state. you heard them talk about that. as i remember, only about 60% of

the people were opposed to us participating in that. i say that to make this point. the american people particularly when they think things are not all well at home, hired their political leaders to act for them. they know we have global responsibilities. oftentimes in a proposed course of action is unpopular, it's not exactly like the voters are telling me not to do it. it's basically like a giant blinking yellow light thing for goodness sakes be careful. tell us what our objectives are. talisman is going to be over and tell us what it is owing to cost. and you better be right. in other words, if you went for america, we forgive you. if you don't, you own it. it ain't like we didn't tell you so. that is basically what these polls mean. you cannot make foreign policy

decisions by polls. you just can't do it. 80% of the people parenthetically were against my helping mexico when we gave them a loan. again in 1995. everything happened that year. and we had just lost the congress. people thought i was not. and so i asked, this is what you have to think about what see how with all these other issues. so we don't make the launch of mexico and a coat or oak and they hate us and so does the whole rest of the america. the next year we have a hundred million illegal immigrants and drugs flowing across the border and chaos reigns everywhere and people ask me, why did you let this happen? i said because today i had to make the decision, there was a poll that said 80% of you were against it. see how that sounds?

the president in international affairs get tired not only to down the road, but around the corner. you could hire to infer the country. you have to start with a goal in mind and work back and realize the citizens understand that there is no way they can know as much about something is you do. you have their own life to live in their own problem. what they tell you not to do something, the really telling you be careful, please. tell us as much as he can about what you're going to do. don't do a more than you have to, don't spend a dollar more than you have to and you better be ready. but it had nothing to do with the discharge of responsibility. i'm not sure their maturity against sars to receive the majority against bosnia, against the russian aid package. it was the majority against our going into kosovo. we didn't have a majority starting any of this. you just have to look down the

street and around the corner and listen to the blinking yellow light and treat your citizens with respect. tell them honestly what you are doing and why. so all of this stuff is happening. finally, we got the peace agreement at dayton between the shutdown. then, in december, we had a formal peace signing in paris. my one and only chance to have a meal was slow but. and i sat down across the table with him. we've talked about this a lot. melissa was intelligent, articulate, cordial and the coldest man i ever met in my entire life. i've never looked in darker eyes in my life. he was also rather paranoid. he knew i'd and a close friend

of her being. he only been dead about a month. he said, you know he was killed because he was betrayed by the member service. by the way, that is why kennedy was killed. you guys just did a better job of carrying it out. everybody was always out to get something in melissa's mind. that justified any kind of thing he did to kill anybody he killed. the price of victory and the way we pursued it was high. the estimates of those killed range from anywhere from one to 300,000. everybody knows there is 2 million refugees driven out of their home. the piece is endured, the unity remains elusive. just today they are having a meeting about whether bosnian has it been that can be taken

into the european union. the answer is probably not now because they haven't been able to form the kind of nationalist to teach an necessary to membership as the serbs still try to join some greater serbia. but the piece is endured. we also, to go back to what i said at the beginning, had a piece in who were while maintaining our relationship with russia. we expanded nato. we took them to members. we had more than 40 affiliated countries and partnerships with peace. we had a special agreement with russia and the ukraine to cooperate with them. we got ukraine and kazakhstan and belarus to take their nuclear weapons out of their country and put it back into russia and under the nunn lugar

bill, we hope to control that. during all these years, by the way, i spent a lot of your tax money to teach about half of the 40,000 crashes involved in the clear, chemical and biological work in lloyd said they would go work for somebody else who would do us ill. it was a good expenditure of your tax payer money. all of that had to be to tittered in the context about you. finally, we made an unequivocal statement by saving the largest community of muslims in departmental europe that we were not in anti-islamic country, that america would take serious risks to keep innocent muslims from being killed and that we would work with and support any islamic population that renounce terror and embrace reconciliation and cooperation.

we were trying to do all of this at once. you can readily see how intelligent is. we had to know how much change yelp could absorb. we had to know how reliable the efforts to move the nuclear weapons out of these other countries back into russia was. all this while dealing with everything we had to bosnia. and we had to do the right things in bosnia into it in the right way. i can't say enough about the intelligence apparatus that was set up to give us timely, quicker, briefer, more accurate

reports and what was going on in bosnia. and we had they are, in their balkan task force, the cia, the defense intelligence tea, the nsa, the joint chiefs of staff, regularly working together. see nature to deputies committee that kept all the agencies working together. we were committed to sharing information, not coordinate, to try to reconcile the apparent inconsistencies and then to make good decisions. you now, i love all the shows, homeland and all that stuff. i love that stuff. but the real world involves all the cia folks out there killing themselves to figure out what is really going on and have to get

that back to the policymakers. what leon says is right. you have to be attacked, not passive can an arab intelligence. otherwise everyone just assumes your bandwidth has been choked in 1994 and 1995 and you wind up like we were, not even having a meeting about one. because you are so obsessed with all this other stuff. so the obligation of the policymakers is to be aggressive in saying what we need. i also agree with the comments that were made in the piano about the need to have someone representing these intelligence forces in the room when you're making decisions so you can get more information. i suppose this is just in my area the only time that the cia went dionne a was when we were

waved river and before when the director of cia was an active partner with the side and the palestinian intelligence services and promoting peace in the middle east. it is hard to quarrel with the results. 1998 is the only year an entire history history defeat israel for about one israeli was killed and another was that prime ministerial election, or the leadership of the country changed names. so we are living in a world where it's easy to blur the lines. but i think it is important to recognize that what they did in bosnia would have lasting and in doing unless it is a cooperative mechanism that was established to share information and to do it in a responsive come is

straightforward way is a good role model data to be followed in the future. it is not one of those lessons to quote one of the things in the book is are to be relearned. i like former secretary of state jim baker very much. but when he said in response to the trouble in bosnia, we don't have a dog did not say, i think he was wrong. we did have a dog in the bosnia site we still do. what was the end of the cold war going to mean? the rise of chaos for the rise of democracy, prosperity and cooperation? if he wanted to be the latter instead of the former, no matter how thorny bosnia had become common to matter how much blood had been shattered, no matter how much determination there was for destruction, we had to get caught trying to do the right

thing. we could not have said we're going to end one century and start another with the first legacy in europe having endured two world wars, a depression and the holocaust in between. the first thing we are going to say is we couldn't do a darn thing to stop ethnic cleansing. secondly, as i said, i think it is important because it revitalized nato.

creative cooperation works best. a few years ago, the wisdom of crowds and in the sentence coming with the concludes. just look around this room. suppose i could instantaneously to a measurement of any person with the highest i.q. we take all the rest of us enjoyed the other room and the person with the highest i.q. goes in his or her own room. a few feet as problems, one after the other and ask for a response, over time the crowd will make better decisions than

a genius. even einstein knew it the biggest measure brain would ever seen. so the fact that they were smart to begin with the mail worked hard made a big difference. that is the second thing we learned. the third thing is that the cooperation on intelligence made all the difference. if you get bad facts and data interpretation, you will make good decisions for the set of facts and interpretations you have, but it won't work in the real world. so again, i think you'll see by the release of the cia documents state they did a heck of a good job. i feel very strongly that we should do more of this. i believe it is true that when i was president i uncovered more documents than anyone else had and i authorized the release of our unclassified document more quickly than ever before.

in addition to this cooperative mechanism we had what the bosnian conflict is going on in 1994, i issued an executive order that declassified 44 million pages of documents. some of them had been kept secret going back to world war i. in a world where power is diffused come you have to trust people with knowledge and be prepared to win arguments based on the knowledge available instead of trying to word it. in 1995, i issued an executive order, which released satellites that had scientific or environmental significance. this is a big deal. he'd been trying to do this since 1990.

it had never been done before. there had never been any release of intelligence photography and the world didn't come to an end. in fact, 90% of you didn't know it had ever happened. the other 10% didn't know was a secret in the first place. we had to be very careful not to create and edit face of importance that block size from the empowerment of ordinary citizens in a democracy. we needed a bunch of this stuff to be secret while we're making the decisions. after it was over, it is a good thing to let scholars and unvarnished, unbiased examiners look at these things. in 1995, we charged the cia and other agencies to institute declassification programs. before that, only 5% of all

classified documents kept with the government had to be released by a time certain. after that, more than 50% it was the sound had to be released within 25 years. thanks to the cia, we are beating the 25 year deadline today. so i think all of this is really important. from 1995 through 2000, six years, we declassified each hundred million pages of documents compared to 188 million in the previous 15 years, including two of those. we declassified about 25% of them. i believe this is an important part of maintaining the public trust. people had sense enough to know that you have to collect information that you don't want to broadcast. but they know they are paying for it, too.

they have also sent enough to note that as soon as the danger is past, we have to give them the information so people can figure out whether we did the right thing with it or not. and what we can do better in the future. this is a big deal at the cia has done at this event today. this is the earliest any of this information -- this kind of information has ever been released. you can say well, you guys liked this because it worked out okay. madeleine story, she could've been even blunter then she was back on other things she said and did that made her a hero to the rest of us. but believe me, what you will find when the time comes, all the documents that were to get released about rwanda is there

aren't any to speak of. because we'd missed it and nobody had to uncover any documents because i just had to get it. but that is another thing. i'll go back to the point leon made. why it is important to be positive, not passive consumer of intelligence. the agency knew that bosnia was eating the world alive and threatened the whole future of europe and keeps innocent people dying over a long period of time. in bosnia, 800,000 people died. it happened in a hurry. we were preoccupied elsewhere and we didn't do anything. i wish i'd have to say that. but isn't that better than covering it up were trying to come up with some kind of a and bull explanation?

it is not to in any way minimize the achievement of what was accomplished in bosnia. we have good intelligence, good people in all relevant positions of authority and responsibility and we put this together. we gave europe a chance to strengthen and broaden the european union. to build a continent that was united, democratic and at peace for the first time since nationstate rose on the european continent. to add the slaughter of a muslim minority that was called ethnic cleansing while there is no biological distinction between them, muslims, and serbs. it is just that it was in sarajevo that the ottoman empire reached northernmost points, the holy roman empire that of

catholic i reached the eastern most points in the orthodox russian empire that was russian orthodox, reached his southern form. people arranged themselves accordingly and later killed themselves as if they are worth ethnic difference is. it is all about pilate takes. nearly always when you find somebody strong killing somebody weak, the stated reason they do it is a lie. and one of the great gifts that secretary albright brought to the deliberations that we had here and in kosovo and the expansion of nato and in support of a strong united europe was a family history and a personal history of having some of those dramatic events unfold. so that's a story.

like all of history, there are many questions that peace has held. because a long time ago, with a lot of other things going on, could people were given good information and make good decisions. thank you very much. [applause]

. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> harvard university kennedy school of government hosted a discussion in september about riptide, an oral history of the effects of digital technology and journalism. it is a project that john sharpstein sat around the press politics and public policy. there is more about riptide from one of its researchers, john huey, editor-in-chief of "time" magazine. cambridge, massachusetts, this is an hour and 20 minute. >> thank you, alex. it may be raising the bill number type. i will do my best here first of all, i too want to thank some people. mostly i want to thank alex jones for making the sure and

stay in fellowship the best possible denies donation for a journalist seeking sanctuary, perspective, respiration and great company. i think i'm speaking for both of my co-authors when i say that. it is just a great place. we're making it all works so smoothly, the same people that nancy palmer and now sends and really the whole schottenstein staff for making it feel like a home away from home in all three of us are really glad to be back home. it feels great. to explain riptide ever so briefly, how it came to be. three weary road executives washed up on the shores of harvard university, all frankly looking for a nest on the ground and is trying to avoid all the work that would be involved in having to write a 1500 word -- a 15 page paper.

that seemed like far too much for us. so we said no, we are not going to do that. smartness and internet journalists unbranded digital reference there at "the new york times" for 17 years. paul sagan, leading-edge internet right down the road here, but also a second-generation journalist with a background in newspapers, television and digital journalism. and me, an old reporter, editor and recently escaped publishing exec it is. what we did was we sat around and they argued because we didn't really agree on a whole lot, but we're all interested in the same topic and that was the digital disruption of the journalism business. our questions were simple. what happened? how did we blow it? what could've been done differently? reargued for a while and finally we propose to our masters that we were going to do this oral

history. i think they thought we were all crazy. but we had googled the topic and we found that there were 77,000 articles that have been written on the subject and we used that to say we don't need to write 77,001st articles. so we decided to target the key institutions in the key decision-makers going back 35 years in our original idea was 10 key moments, 20 key people. we will be in and out of here in a heartbeat. we met a lot of skepticism, but we finally found the godfather in eco-malley, we went to when he said this is a great idea. he should've a template for it, which frankly we stole from "vanity fair." but we improved on it in terms of adding video. we got his endorsement and he also steered us to a graduate student here at the kennedy school named alex remington.

this is the way these things work. alex now worked with the "washington post" i'm happy to say. people do still find jobs in the newspaper business from harvard. he let us and turned to josh benton, who has dirty been cited, but who really is the guy that made her fantasy becomes reality and just did a great job. so then watching over it wisely was tom patterson. more importantly than his subtle help, his wife, lori, gave us the video camera that we use to interview while these people because as we learned, we thought harvard was a fabulously wealthy institution. at $30 billion or whatever it is does not go to video cameras for sharansky and fellows. tom patterson with the video camera. anyway, we got carried away. we did 63 interviews. we will be 44,000 word essay. the whole thing in its entirety.

i don't want to discourage anyone from within our project. but the whole thing in its entirety totals 444,000 word, which is more than the 418,053 and gone with the wind. but less than the 587,000 in war and peace. so it is too simple -- doable. martin, to whom we are all grateful not only for the interviews, but coming to us tonight to help us explain that we'll get to the meat. a little color for the road for seven quick awards. number one, justifiably proud of his office, david bradley of the atlantic media, huge sweeping views of the potomac is what vocal non-is supposed to look like in the movies and is the first thing he shows you in the last thing he shows you. the most ironic moments occurred in the google conference room on

top of silicon valley where we were going to interview eric schmidt, richard pancras and others, all electronic equipment, impossible for anyone to figure out how to get electricity to come out of the wall outlet. we had to have a technician come into the room. he said this happens all the time. [laughter] i think they are one of the largest users of electricity in the world, but they cannot plug something into the wall can make it work. so they don't know everything. the best movie. this is a local award. it goes to the office at the life alive the good restaurant down the street in cambridge. that is where reclusive jerry levin in the city made them for breakfast before we met him. i had the elvis. siliceous, chocolate peanut butter pecan. the new airbus disruptor workspace awards goes to andrew sullivan's tiny apartment in greenwich village to ancient

dogs suffering from copd during the interview. if you listen carefully, you can hear back the five guys burgers turnaround. that is what the new journalism looks like. the most camera shy, shocking like us to arianna huffington. the only interviewee who refuse to be video recorded and the missing link or one that got away so far goes to rupert murdoch, who agreed in principle, but the project, but things kept coming up. he had a really, really busy here and wasn't able to make it. with that, i will turn it over to my colleague, martin, who is getting down to the meat of the matter. [applause] adding a lack idea of mac

[inaudible] [inaudible] -- newspaper publishing -- newspaper association of america. she was also ceo and publisher of "washington post" interactive come as a two very important roles in this history. and of course, arthur train for junior, "new york times" co. and publisher of "the new york times." i want to start with sort of a crime-fighting question to each of the panelists, starting with head and then going to my last. and it has to do with the state of journalism. if you were a doctor in the state of american journalism was your patient, how would you assess the diagnosis? >> i think if you look at the data coming you'd be really concerned because if you look at the number of journalists, it's gone down by 30% in the last seven or eight years. newspaper revenue, which people think of journalism as

newspapers in many cases is down about 55%. i think you see really a difference in terms of the digital landscape that people believe the content is going to work. or one of the investors in journalism and so i think if he just kind of first things right now, u.s.a. the patient needs a lot of work and there's a continued progress on that work. i think if you look forward, there's some very exciting things on the horizon and one of the things that i'm most excited about about journalism is journalists are essentially not work on their own. if you see the bleeding edge of what is that any journalism and some of the work you did that "new york times" or the "washington post" from a digital sandpoint come you start to see the excitement of what is potentially possible. consumers like to pay for comment. consumers were curated in high-quality content and there's a large role for journalism in the future. if you frozen right now, you

have to say there's a rough period of time and people really need to focus on where the models are going and get there quickly. >> caroline. >> i promised you i would have my lobbyist pat on. i would say we are definitely a transformation. the 80% print revenues, 20% print circulation has dramatically changed since 2006. so the revenue is diversifying. the audiences have never been larger. fully 70% of u.s. adult in any given week read a newspaper online and print or mobile, so audiences are not a problem. it is the revenue that is continuing to be a real challenge. but you know, the stuff that i read, estimates say that it's

the leveling out. >> i was thinking about actually using dentistry and so doctors. is that okay? [laughter] because they think we are losing our first see them grow in our new teeth. it's painful and it's tough to lose teeth and we are seeing that happen. but we know that what is coming is going to be bigger, to the point of reach, bigger to the point of impact because we are now able to reach people around the world. when we started in this business, that was impossible to imagine. >> great. so following onto that, one of the folks that we interviewed obviously is part of this was don graham along with carolina from the washington post. and we didn't know at the time, although if you actually read between the lines, particularly

in the part we excerpt it at the end of the essay, he just sold the journalism business, the "washington post" to just be those for $250 million. i think it was two years ago he paid 315 million. that was the reported price for the "huffington post." it just goes to kind of show the relative values out there. it do you think each of us got a better deal then you? [laughter] >> you know, first of all what about the "huffington post," many people questioned what the value was overwrought and how much you paid for it. today could talk to investors, they think a "huffington post" is a tremendous amount more than what we paid for it. the reason is because arianna recognize some names very distinctly about how information gets transferred in how people want information.

"huffington post" has been the number one distributed new source of facebook. from a valuation standpoint when you look the fact "huffington post" has gone from zero to that 100 million video views, the first cable channel for the web in the "huffington post" and the migration of what we thought was essentially a purely digital dna company and has now migrated into one of the best brands in the world. it's than 10 countries. my experience in newspapers and news started right side of this room. i had one newspaper in boston. we ended up buying something called the square deal. people from harvard remember the square deal. as a free newspaper weise to hand out right at the street in cambridge. the day that i changed my viewpoint on where news and newspapers are going, i went to m.i.t. onea when i see her thought it was a good i thought the precursor to the mosaic about information coming on the screen in getting electronically transferred. i walked back to our office and

said to my partner, i don't know if this internet thing is, but we're leaving and doing it. we need to get out of overdoing because i've never seen information transfer that easily. i think arianna essentially understood that i played it as a massive scale to news and data in a destructive way. i think jeff's "washington post" was a great purchase and interesting. john henry from "the boston globe," the front row as well. i think the future will be bright because that dna with a plug in and transferred in mutated at "the new york times." i don't know how many subscribers "the new york times" has now, but the transformation has been substantial. i got a great deal on the "huffington post" and just got a good "washington post," depending what he does with it. >> thank you. i want to stay on the "washington post" for a minute and he relates to the globe as well. caroline, he ran the digital

division at the post and then i think left after it was integrated back into the parent. in retrospect, do you think it was inevitable that the grant family would sell it to someone or is there something that could've been done at some stage that would've changed the future? >> i don't think it was inevitable. i'm probably not answering your question. it's just too hard to say. i think it is quite wise to sell the east coast. just add don has been transferred long time and they share similar values. i think understanding that the technology and having to understand audience, which is in the newspapers didn't traditionally have to do, but now really have to do it is quite wise. they understand the prescription nonviolent putting it into a private place. they're not going to have the pressure of being a part of a

public company. i don't know that it was inevitable. i admire the grants for doing it because they think they are trying to put the washington post in the best possible place for the future and that took a lot of courage. >> so our affair, the idea of a paper of has changed dramatically over the past century. today we have, as tim alluded to, with lots of creators in the dominant distribution channels at google, facebook and twitter. we sometimes chat about the nature of an authoritative source on this highly fraught at the world. if there is anyone news organization in the united states that still probably has that as part of its dna, it is "the new york times." what is the nature of authority in the world that there is literally high vertical eyes on

every imaginable topic? >> i think the nature of authority hasn't changed. i think quite frankly i authority is still about accuracy. it is about rats, knowing and calling out your own mistakes waianae make them. and having experienced people on the ground, who don't parachute into a story condo that come in knowing the landscape of the story. ..

if the double opportunity for us all. the downside is all of a sudden everybody is looking at the photograph of the boston bomber. everybody knows it is the boston bomber. he has been identified except it isn't him because i slept through the digital world so fast and it was just picked up. and that's kind of accuracy is critical. let's go back to riptide for a moment. during your interview you spoke

about patch on the local journalism effort. since the interview a bunch of things have been announced but the main thing is that you decided to onsite is the operation. can you talk about why -- what is the nature of local journalism and why is it so hard? >> for those of you that don't know, it is a product that we rolled up to the communities across the u.s. the theory is what he just talked about which is the authoritative nature of local journalism. from the platform perspective basically you have the receiving nature of publications and news about getting invested at the same in my town where i live and it is a very aggressive

standpoint that local people living in local communities would want local information and it's important to them. a uniquthe unique visitors on te 900 pounds. it's been looked at from the investment community and something you should do privately. but our theory was the massive disruption going on in the news and information locally. there would be lots of consumer interest and lots of business interest and from a bold standpoint, we should do a land grabbing sensually after that audience and what we know was basically taking the 500 patches that have business models and work. there's 400 that have traffic where we don't have the business

model fast enough so we are going to partner with other countries and since we announced that, we have basically ten or 15 companies that have off-line newspapers, television stations around those areas where we have patches. patches are in 900 of the best communities across the united states and in many places from a traffic standpoint they have equal or more traffic than the immediate properties do in those regions. so there's a lot of interest on the part. i would say from the standpoint of, you know, an investment that matters in the communities in the united states is the single biggest investment in journalism in the united states and local communities and i think the fact of the matter is the path that we will continue to go on past because there is the need for the information locally. so, i would say looking forward

on the patch you will see us do partnerships. they probably won't do partnerships with companies around those cities. but i would say overall as a leader they allow the aol employeemployees and audience is to put a lot of energy into patch, which i think was good for the country. i've had more newspaper people stop me to say the patches around the city are made up of local newspaper and invest in journalism because they are afraid that you were going to get more aggressive and i'm not talking about small because the bigger companies did that so i think patch helped fuel the local community information and the fact that journalism matters in local communities and people shouldn't be investing in it. when we talked to julius jankowski i don't know whether you'vyou read his interview bute had commissioned a study and what he found was consistent

with what tim said, the problems you can offer on the local side. can you talk a little bit about that, you cursed him talk about patch from a newspaper perspective. is it as bad as the study suggests? the numbers suggest that the top 200 that true areas have the toughest times and when it is smaller than that it is actually stronger. so 200 is a big number. it's very difficult to cover with companies covered in the past given the pressures on the newsroom budgets and a dramatic advertising revenue. often times the newspaper disregarding patch up a study that pew data showed that 85% of all media stories and tv, cable,

radio start from the newspaper. >> what are the bright spots but tim talked about in the setup of the innovation and getting to the next. do you see any evidence of that when you look out at the landscape was are you seeing people are actually losing their teeth. >> hindsight is always 20/mac 20. we have the garden. if you wanted to advertise shoes in washington you pretty much have too advertised "washington post" and if you want to buy shoes on sale, look at the "washington post." the internet changes everything. on the digital side you have approached it as you have to sell a bunch of banner ads and

maybe that will make up for the cost in th of the newsroom. i'm speaking obviously facetiously. that doesn't work obviously. you sort of figure that out. so as i said when we are looking at a lot of different revenue streams it is a huge change even in the last five years just some businesses into digital agencies and print publications there is no silver bullet. there is 20% into digital alike. it isn't a one-size-fits-all. what works obviously for the new dark times does not fit for another newspaper and what fits for a small newspaper, you have to know your market. but there is innovation going on. it's just like going to the

dentist. sadly that is not true. >> we haven't got into cavities yet. >> it is heartening. it really is. >> speaking of which, at the times you talked up the internationalization of the brand. i don't think there has ever been a newspaper that has been a truly international paper. >> you are talking about something much larger. now, the website pretty much went internationally the minute we turned it on by translating that into revenue has proven to be difficult. what is the model with the u.s. newsprint clacks?

>> the tribune is owned by "the new york times" and we are going in october to change and rebranding the international "new york times." this is a digital play. if you went to iht.com you ended up at new dark times.com. so the purpose is to reach the international community that we believe is out there for a general interest newspaper. we have tried it first in the language within china and we wrote a story that upset the

chinese government and they shot us down. so the story did go on with the pulitzer prize. it's going to cause heartache for us in the business that we just interested in and just opened. >> but the core values are critical into the value proposition over time that we did what we felt we had to do around that story. but let me just go back for a second and say that, you know, when i travel it is clear that there is a lot more for us to do to make international, to reach our international potential that the international "new york times" is just a step. right now, for example if you want to subscribe to "the new york times," we don't give you the ability to enroll quickly.

we are fixing that. that is just an easy example. so there is much more that we are doing but there's no doubt that the zaire is there. martin has heard the story but i will share. just prior to us going with the idea of a chinese language website i met with a chinese general, a couple of chinese generals. a woman interestingly began our conversation by talking in a very angry way. she was very upset. we have just begun to charge for the web i web not long ago and e problem was that every morning she would wake up and the first thing she would do is go to see what had happened in the world and it wouldn't accept her credit card. it turns out we didn't accept

pla credit cards which solved the problem, but that chinese general first thing in the morning she would go to "the new york times." and if that doesn't speak to the nature of the changing nature of the world and the opportunities we have, i can't think of what else does. >> i want to follow up with the other end of this when we had our interview we talked about the metered model and you had brought up the pay models and i just want to go down the road on that for a second. we talked in the interview about young people and the notion that young people don't seem to be as willing to pay for content on the web. music was a good example of that as frankly the off-line media products. do you think that as the young people they will be willing to pay for a digital subsection to

"the new york times"? >> let's start with the fact that more and more people are showing a willingness to pay for experience is the value on the web. thank you steve jobs. it's simple to buy it again, to buy something that you find of value. so, that's changing. but the second thing is let's not pretend that 14-year-olds both newspapers. they didn't. and they never did. and people come to newspapers when they find the need for the value a patient. and often that is when they get a first job or when they have a family and they start to think about what the community is offering and they start to engage in th a community in a different way.

i think those things are coming together. i want to go to your content strategy because it's really interesting. i think that you create some content and then you felt access where you do deals with people like everyday health to provide access to the audience. can you explain how to make the decision between what you will cover and what other people should cover, how do you do that clacks. >> a kind of simplistic way the strategy is a centrally we have a theory that most people care about a limited set of things. 70% of the users use 15 sites a month and i will argue something that arthur just said that as people tend to get older, their time becomes more valuable as well to read s three of the peod to spend more time on things that matter more to them and they are willing to pay for things. our strategy has been to be the most human-based company in terms of the content area that we focus on.

it is based on the influence or type of events based on either local or global. 80% is essentially that 80% of consumption that happens against the economy and what people care about. we put a filter against all of the categories that we have in the content perspective and to try to make the decisions based on where are we going to have huge influence over the things that we invest in versus the partner, and i will give you an example. in the country and in the world they are right now almost every major ceo from the industry that will be there on stage and it gets looked at around the world

by anyone that is interested in the technology space you said that as an example of an influencer space that we have a major, major share that we can be successful of the journalism and for the monetary standpoint. so that was the first generation of the content strategy to essentially get a new space and be influential. the second generation of the content strategy has been to build out massive partnership networks around those areas. so, aol and the number of brands people know i'm a tech gadget and what we have done is build an infrastructure technology wide x. to those properties to service other people in the industries. so we service about 40,000 other publishers now with video, with advertising, with content sharing. so i fundamentally believe that technology won't change humans that humans will take change technologies.

the first has been about people trying to love things but over time people regulate back to things they care the most about and with one quick story thread last year i had our college interns coming and i do dinner with them at the end of the summer to get their feedback on the company thread last summer i asked them what patterns as a call student there were three patterns. one was the following through with things on twitter. second was that they were following more influential brands. "the new york times" is one of the things i talk about a lot and they are following just the high-level influence of people and the third thing is they are changing their personal profiles on the web. they don't want their personal profiles to be dictated by a giant social network that has all kind of information about them a lot of them have started to migrate information towards lincoln and other things where they wanted to have solid profiles of themselves. not to look for jobs but just to have that level of the area.

for the content area when you boil it down he's essentially lets invest in the most important areas of journalism information and content, the giant technology networks around it and service people that want to have very solid pieces of information to live their lives and that pretty much dictates everything we do. >> and how does the huffingtonpost fit into that clacks do you believe it is a platform? >> it is a triple player for us. i was up early saturday morning just on the web and we started this thing called serenity saturday with aol and huffingtonpost and we one should be why ye edition. we talked about how it was open. so with huffingtonpost, you have a global news platform. it is aggressively going to be the first global information

source. >> yours are in language, right clicks. >> at the moment it is halted. we are still producing it and we get a lot of traffic but not within china. >> trusted brand. people use information every day on a global basis. if you look at why we bought the huffingtonpost, we saw something that looked like it could be ignited by more resources and globalization. when the new pope was elected, we had a huffingtonpost basically putting new content on huffingtonpost u.s. and i think we have the most unique coverage around the pope being chosen and there's a lot of other examples about that. but the huffingtonpost squared into all of that content strategy that i described. >> i think that we are going to

turn to the audience now. there are three ground rules that i've been asked to assess for you. one is that all questioners must identify themselves accurately. [laughter] number 21 question per person and please, no speeches. third is that questions end with a question mark. that seems self-evident to me. we have four microphones. one, two, three, four. and i will try to get to the questioners on each microphone over the next 20 or 25 minutes or so. >> i'm formerly a "new york times" reporter for about 13 years and i'm struggling with this issue of how you find news.

one of the things i worry the most about is the content that the reporters are putting out there. the amount of time and the number of interviews able to produce a story. and i'm worried that that is shrinking. is that inevitable that we will go to the stories and not get quite as many interviews? >> i do not delete it is inevitable. there is no question. my colleagues at the globe know this and the traffic that we got was stunning. during the presidential elections we had better traffic covering the actual election then the television networks. so people are coming to the news organizations now for video

content, for the immediate delivery. all that said, are we still engaged in the role of journalism clicks absolutely. you can create a long-term journalism where they will spend a year working on the story and you can integrate video and you can turn it into an experience unlike anything that we used to be able to do in our old days. so i think it really does depend on the story. but this is why quite frankly you still need to invest in the journalism. you're looking for different types of experiences. i was on a train coming up from new york and david brooks was in the car with me. he had done some teaching and he was talking about the washington bureau that he had joined the 11

years ago and the washington bureau that he is part of now. quite frankly it was younger, more vibrant. let's say there was a lot more diversity because you had videographers, the technical teams that are there to support and it's just still a very powerful operation. >> i want to ask a question with respect to the huffingtonpost. how much of your stuff is now red on smartphones and mobile devices and how does that change the form? stack based on what you are on it could be 30 or 40%. but also, we talked about the mobile changes. people actually consume more with mobile suit if you take "the new york times" and look at the usage i'm guessing you look at somebody that reads the desktop of the newspaper they don't switch the consumption 100% to mobile.

they add a consumption so on average people typically have about 30% and i think the people are rising fast stories to get the audience and then there's journalism and if you read the first book he basically talks a lot about the fact which was so her ticket would make people cry and he would have a hard news. you have companies competing. here's the bad news you don't have his brand so you need to do things to gain traffic so they will be more aggressive about fixing the low quality and high quality together. the huffingtonpost does some of the same stuff. >> did you want to weigh in on

that. >> i think that there has been a huge shift in content and apart from smaller newsrooms, you know, ten years ago a natural paper would send 15 people to the olympics. a bunch of them. is that really necessary? so as you see a lot more information about audiences a lot are breaking news only, radio, and tv newspaper newsroom but then really investing on the investigative side and being much more specific about the areas they are going to invest on the investigative side. that whole area is changing and it's interesting. >> my apologies. let's go to this microphone. >> i regret and a graduate student. thank you for doing this. what an incredible opportunity.

i want to follow up on a conversation about local journalism. my question is around what makes it work when it does and what makes it not work when it doesn't. there was preference that in some cities or areas it is profitable and in other areas it isn't so much. it's just the size of the city. what makes it work when it does and what should that mean for us in the future of local journalism clicks. >> a lot of it is trust and authenticity. people still trust newspapers. it's a lot different than somebody who doesn't so that is the baseline for living and understanding the community. >> i am a junior at the

scientifics and the editor for the harvard political review. so, even the review has changed from when al gore started on the print publication until now having an online presence, the culture has changed. much larger publishing board so i was wondering what it has been like cultural and what do you look for in journalists in terms of skills that are involved in the organization? "the new york times" puts up visualization video. there are so many new things on the site. what is it like now looking at "the new york times" as opposed to 20 years ago? >> i love that question. ..

is getting the engineers in as we think about the new products that we're create. and we didn't talk much about new product development, but we're in the middle of working -- why should we -- we're going create new products aimedded at the younger audience to the point made earlier in the conversation giving a different experience. highly engineered. t going to have to be daifnt experience. it's going to have be a

different experience across devices. that's where i think we probably missed the beat. but clearly our -- it is our training. training training. but so far determine on the ones now able to ingrain become part of that experience. we have doubled the amount of video in the last six months, i think. we all doing it. we're experimenting. we realize rid owe, to your point early it's different on mobile than it's going to be on the large screen. so there's a lot -- there's a lot out there for us. tim, do you want to take a wack? >> who are the entrepreneur you were talking about? >> we have a big intern program,

and people want intern. and the journalism front basically just from learning. i have to do it myself is there's two pieces of advice. one, is you have to use the platforms themselves. and i think journalism is in a new teeth growing stage. you can't be a journal iif you don't understand the platform where things are going and try them. the second thing, actually, i think not a bad idea instead of pulling up a chair next to another journalist every time you sit down pull up a chair next to an engineer. one of the things i saw at the huntington post, which was imprezzive, the journalist and engineers sat together. in many places around aol. that was not the case. and really the "huffington post" helped us rethink that process. and, by the way, in silicon valley, i spent twenty years

going back and forth. there's a more collaborative a type of environment. i would ask you if you want to answer. what are the five fastest growing technology platforms for journalist to put content out fast ensure to you have an account on them? that's essentially what i ask internally. you need to know, i need to know. it's really important. >> good. over here then. >> hi, my name is ben and i'm a harvard alumni. netflix commissioned "house of cards "they did the bold decision of releasing all the episodes. nbc have begun to give limited interview and broadcast more interviews. my question is, for "the new york times" or aol or other media providers, how are you

experiencing with more investigative reporting and how to bundle or release the content as one entire package or parcel it out and engage viewers more effectively? >> well, i think we're all experimenting. ic i mentioned earlier. this was a huge section. snowfall that when was a story about a terrible tragedy that took place skiing in washington state, i think. and when we printed it of it a full section. but the experience on the web was so immensely powerful, because all of the video from the graphics. s unless you go see it, i can't possibly do it justice is. but when the woman is -- you're reading about a woman who was skiing and caught up in

avalanche next thing you know he's under the snow and fighting for her life. by the way, there's is the video of her talking to her about it. right there. it brings it to life. so a lot of it is experiencing and and we put story on the web, obviously, before they are in the paper. we put magazine pieces upstarting wednesday now. but you mentioned earlier about the devices changing the way people come to it. and you're absolutely right. we see on the tablet people come to stories at 9:00 at night. 8:00 to 10:00. unbelievable tablet use. people want to see what is in tomorrow's paper. we just have to -- i'm one of them. it's part of the power. that's part of the answer. >> yeah. i think actually the, you know,

in a various way i think netflix took what normally distribution windows were set up for the economics how things had been historically set up and said human beings would probably behave different if you gave them the content all at once. in a testing way but in a thoughtful way, we actually look at disruptive -- how do you disrupt the behavior? and one thing i haven't -- we don't do a lot in sports. i tell people internally i worked at espn for awhile. you can't get by 5% better. you have to be 75 or 100% better. we have to be disruptive. when you we look at doing disruptive thing it's the release windows what you do is a disruption point as much as the content. that's one and the second one is distribution partnership. one thing we are working on you

named off the distribution. another way is using the partners to do it as well. i think the strategies. i would point out netflix from a brilliant standpoint recognized the human behavior and how they were set up. they went for human behavior and have done an amazing job. >> yes. >> full circle now to this mic. >> hi. i'm sorry. >> is this on? >> i apologize. [laughter] >> hi, my name is selena. i'm a junior at the college. gibb the fact there are so many organizations now that offer news videos online, where do you see the future of tv news? >> i have a view point on this, but basically if you look at the consumption patterns how people

use phones and tablets and those things, the fact of the matter is when you look -- the average tv show is basically -- if you took a half hour and 22 contents and 8 minute of commercial. if you look how they use the web. that's a faster way than 22 minutes to get people tons of information. i think you'll see the advent and scale of faster, higher quality content overall. i think from a standpoint people want trusted brand and trusted people as much as the world seems like it's user generated base content. when you ask the interns what they're following. they're not randomly going out to find information. they want someone to tell them i met with somebody well known in an offline content vertical on

friday. she said, why do you think you are successful on the web? >> because i tell people what they want and need. i don't make things a jump all. i tell them. i think the future of television and web video stoght going to be a very highly cure rated, very disrupted time-based thing almost like the netflix of how how much content you get in a time period. i think it's exciting. i was interested in the ante-dote about the chinese woman who read "the new york times" every day. how have you publications changed to be able to convince more of the worldwide readers to read your respective publications? and similarly how have you managed to retain the national readers? for example, why should i read

the nsa news for "the new york times" or "huffington post" as opposed to going to some other publication? >> it's a good question. there's no simple answer. so as we -- as i mentioned we're going to be rebranding in part to further tighten the journal iic ties so we'll have a news room in paris and lon dough, we'll have a news room in hong kong. we'll have a news room in new york. what we're looking at is a 24-hour news sickle. when people are asleep in new york and waking up in china, we and asia we want the ability for them to come to the site and see it may be more tailored to the asian point of view.

it doesn't mean the stories will be different. we'll put different stories in different places. give people experience. and all of this being driven by the fact that more and more people can create the content experience they value. they care about sports they can put it higher. if they care about politics, they can put that higher. so it's about that kind of human adaptation as well. so it's going to be an ongoing issue as we learn more. >> our strategy has been to partner with local news providers in countries. most of the international e dig have a local large media partner in france.

we believe we are getting the best. but i think it's really competitive. and we plan on competing. >> and also political is there a point of view issue? is part of what you're getting at there's a political side to this as well as a journalistic side? i don't know. i'm just asking. >> yeah. there no question that is an important point. one of the challenge in how do we give the same -- how do we make sure the experience -- we're getting the new york point of view in spain. we have to make sure we are giving people a broader breadth than that. >>, i mean, i think that is one of the beautiful things about the internet is you can go to "the guardian" and you can go to "the new york times" and go and, you know, you can get a lot of -- "the new york times" may cover a story differently than "the

guardian" may cover a story. that's an advantage we all have. >> thank you. up here. >> hi. i'm [inaudible] i'm asking on behalf of the john f kennedy forum. have you viewed social media? many complex ideas can't be condensed to 140 characters. is that a hindrance or it clicks and the sharing capacity overruled any sort of negative effects of social media? >> do you want automatic three to an? >> whoever has any thoughts. thank you. >> t a general question. does anyone have a thought about social -- twitter? >> i think twitter is almost like a caption to a photograph. if it's engaging, you're going to go find more about what that person has to say about something. sometimes people use twitter as a i'm going to say whatever i think and get in trouble later. so it depend on who is

tweeting. i think it's sort of a caption. >> isn't twitter just a giant distribution center? >> that's right. >> i'm sure it's a powerful tool. and a tool for gettingings information in as well as getting information out. and the challenge for journalists is to be able to sift through the information you're getting to make the story generally a complex story understandable. >> i would say the next generation of the web people debate this right now. but twitter is launching cards and other things. what started as a just feeder for information quickly now building a more infrastructure inside a twitter. one of the things that our brabdz are doing. build more conclusive piece of content that actually fit inside of twitter. you can have a longer experience. i think a lot of newspapers are doing it and "the new york times" and everybody. where twitter is today and where facebook will be in the future.

my gets they try to build out the distribution capabilities overall. i think it's best known for the short. i think you're going to see other things get longer on the platform. >> and a journalists have used twitter for source material. did anyone see such and such happen. >> let's not pretended this is new. this is something that newspapers, journalists have had to deal with for decades. we don't remember what of it like when all the sudden you couldn't pick up a telephone and weren't dealing with your source one on one. it had a big impact and people said you can't trust what people are going to say over a wire. and go back even further. the telegraph. in the 18 -- in the late 1850s a new york publishers wrote in his own newspaper. he witnessed the death of newspaper.

literature, he said, will survive. but newspapers must fade away. he just met the telegraph. and what they didn't understand is no this is going to feed information in. it's not -- so it's a tool that we are all getting better and better at using. and social media is an extension. >> thank you. >> hi, my name is ski already. i will be presenting the official twitter question for tonight's forum. so the question primarily addresses actually it kind of also goes off of what someone asked a few questions ago. you were discussing how you can now choose your political angle based on the website you would like online. the question more addresses because of the combination of huffington forecast and aol, you now have the opportunity to expose to millions of people who might not be using the internet to obtain news.

you're able to feed them political information. so how do you go about not necessarily choosing because you discuss how the formula for choosing what you feed. the people who go on aol and exposed to the huffington boast how do you choose a political angle which you choose the information. >> sure aol and "huffington post" basically there's a lot of stories from "huffington post" on aol and continue to be. there's a news chooser you use to comu. the news you want. the other thing i would say i think the "huffington post" started probably with more of a political angle overall. i think one thing that happened a lot, if you look through the "huffington post" overtime there's been a lot of forums set up for people with different political views to share on the "huffington post." the "huffington post" if you go to "huffington post" live or toughing ton poe there's a pretty wide range of view.

one of the things we thought important from a brand standpoint. you have different brands with different type of users. we feel like it's one of the best news sources in the world for us to offer aol users. we offer them a lot of choices as well. i think actually from a standpoint of opportunity, this is different than a lot of us competitive. it's going to feed-base everything is feed. and there's no choice at all. one of the thing we have done is actually said we're going to have a voice and some opinions about things. we want to cure rate and save people time by doing that. we try to give them multiple view and multiple voices. we like the "huffington post" and if you don't look at facebook or twitter. a lot of people look at "huffington post." we give you a choice what news source you want. >> thank you.

>> hi. i'm a -- soft more. i work with sam and paul on the harvard political review. in the recent years we have seen an amazing ways you can depict news. my question would be what would you see as a -- in the future journalism? [inaudible] >> i'll just preface arthur's comment. i think the written word provides a lot of context that something immediate like an image or video can provide. if you read as i was reading

today, the report having to do with the conference there's a lot of context there that nothing other than the written word could really convey. so i think it's context more than anything else. if you think about the technology changes over the last 100 years. the internet is the first one to bring us back to the written word. radio took us away from the written word. television took us further away from the written word. and the internet, the web gave us the ability to integrate the written word back in. i'm actually a huge fan for of number reasons because the technology does give you the ability to engage in all different methods. and with a we're learning over and over using any single method is failure.

it's the multiplicity of methods integrated with each other that is breeding real success. great. i think we are full circle again back here. my name is -- [inaudible] and i'm a freshman at the college. and mr. armstrong, i believe earlier, if i did interpret it correctly. you said not just anyone can be a journalist. i'm not sure if i interpreted it. what about bloggers? how have they disrupted, like, professional media? and how are journalists working around the -- and steal news from dpircht websites?

newspapers in new york city and if you read the hurst weak, you see something inside the book which is the same thing happening on the web right now. which is people are using different form of content, bloggers, twitter feeds, those things, to disrupt people's flow to gain audience. and there's a difference between audience development in journalism. a lot of tactics on the web is about audience development. what happens is they turn it in to journalism. there's well-known properties that start off as disruptive and said we can make it to a business. let move toward journalism. and there's 15 great example of those on the web. i think bloggers can be very powerful. i think also, you know, if you look at youtube, for instance, you look at the number of people on youtube that have views in category that are disruptive.

you find more people that resemble bloggers i think there's a big opportunity for people to do disruptive things. >> and for journalists to become very successful bloggers, and expand their footprint not only for the institution they may represent but individually. and the journalist's brand is a subject that all of us have to be spending more and more time dealing with. my apology. we only time for one more question. and indeference to my mistake before. i turn to this mic. hi. i'm jenny and a freshman in college. there's a lot of talk of bunch of new people coming online and -- put at 5 billion people in the coming decades. and i'm wondering how that might change the target audience for

online journalism. >> that's a great question. it's a great question. [inaudible] what shea saying is that i think our -- >> in their book talked about 5 billion people. how does that change all of you? your approaches as to content and journalism? >> it's the great question and the great opportunity. a year and a half ago, what was the largest country outside the united states outside the u.s. where people coming to "the new

york times." anyone want to take a guess? coming to the "new york times" on digitally, obviously, after the u.s. was canada, u.k. was next. australia was number three, and -- nope but you get the thought. english language; right. that's on -- outside the u.s., china was number one. this was before we did the chinese language website. this was in english. so that, i think, speaking very much to your thought. i mean, the possibilities of our growth, the possibility of the value of quality of information that maybe they can't -- people can't get in other certain places is really speaks to the opportunity, i think.

[inaudible] things that increase the broad band. while they come online they come online at the higher bandwidth we think. >> and it just accelerates the integration that arthur talked about. from story telling purposes. >> all right. wonderful. i wish we had time to take all of the questions but we don't. now i want to introduce the third member to wrap it all up. >> thank you, everybody. it's great for the three of u to be back here. we felt the warm embrace from harvard when we came. especially alex and the team. we've intrigued you go to

digitalriptide.org. if you can't remember that just go to the site and find the link. i don't think john probably scared you too much with the word count. you don't have to read it all. cow can search it or watch the video. i promise if you let the people speak for them, you will be engage the and learn. you'll laugh. in the 60 some -- there are a couple that will put you to sleep. i'm going to tell you which ones they are here. >> the three here -- i'm not -- >> they are exempted. i think tonight's discussion with rip tide is meant to be that. but it's not a pessimistic discussion or pessimistic conclusion. we're not pessimistic about the future of news. certainly, a we look back and talk to people. we found that the truism most

true what is reasonably clear is what already happened in the past. we the people interviewed agreed on what was clear. one of the things that was clear don't be that stall. the truth is. it's been written in some of the other articles that john talked about is that journalism wasn't always great. there were colden ages with many flaw. many communities that weren't covered at all. many voices that weren't heard from. not enough i diversity. it's one of the thing we encouraged as we interviewed people and didn't find the kind of diversity it. it wasn't in journalism before. they exacerbated it and improved it others.

there a couple of things about the pasta are important. one the idea of original sense. of it this idea that mostly had martin and arthur not given away the news for free. all of it would have worked out okay over the long-term. that wasn't the case. if anybody who had news hasn't given away. the digital disrupter. people with different model gave it away for free. caved is the back. he wassed at reuters and yahoo!. he gave it away for free with a different business model. where the geneie gout out of the model. there was interesting vocabulary. you wouldn't have heard it at the panel years ago. it was about the importance of engineer. you heard about journalist and engineers sitting together.

arthur said a highly engineered product referring the need to know. one of the things that news organizations didn't do and they seem to be learning now and must learn is you have to embrace engineering and figure out how to hire them and collaborate with them. the disrupter and people who built the biggest platforms today. >> we'll leave the last couple of minutes and take you live to the hudson institute in d.c. we will be talking about the role of france in europe in world affair and might also touch on the recent iran nuclear agreement. this is live coverage on c-span two. >> and our live audience on c spab around america and i want to give a special thanks to the terrific folks at c-span for the important sf you provide to us. we have a truly exceptional program tonight. a speech by french opposition leader on france's role within europe and europe's role on the

global stage. now before i have the honor of introducing him, whom i've had the pleasure of knowing for many years. let me say a few words about the hudson institute and our topic for this evening. hudson is, as all of you know, a market-oriented international policy research organization dedicated to original research and analysis that promotes security, prosperity, and freedom. we were founded in 1961, by the late geostrategies. a brilliant, creative, and unconventional thinker. ever since his time for more than a half century hudson scholars have paid special attention to fran. publishing regularly in key. hudson, in fact, was almost unique, i think, among american policy research organizations who after a clear analysis

supported general's decision to remove france's nuclear arsenal from under the nato umbrella. we have a long that digitalriptide.org -- the time in a controversial report that we if that an independent french nuclear deterrent would be more credible against the soviet threat. few here, i dare say, will remember that hudson for many years had a for reis office. one i'm ready to reopen. [laughter] but only under one condition. i be named director. no, but in automatic seriousness, our scholars have had a long tradition of briefing key french traditions including french presidents. hudson was the first think tank in washington to host the rising star. then finance minister in october

of 2004 at the luncheon that was widely celebrated in the french press that drew about as much french press as this evening. we enjoyed briefing the president and key advisers on numerous occasion. hudson, i should note, continues to recognize the critical porn of france and european allies that sentiment unfortunately is not universally held here in washington. to be frank, u.s.-european relations are in a challenging period. not simply the result of the pivot to asia or the snowden revelations. a rising tide of isolationism and a who that provide itself on multilateralism. is often unfortunately than the predecessor and the frequently crit siefm as such in european press has left europeans with a

sen that the alliance means far less today than any time since world world war ii. adding to the challenges from a french perspective the fact that franceed admired in a deep recession. the crisis so deep it shattered the unity driving the european project. and helped the rise of extreme right political parties who were the election to be held today with fair astonishing do well in many countries including france. hims pressive bio is known to all of us in this room. graduate to my alma maters. he's been trusted with many key

leadership positions including majority leader of the fridge parliament. in addition to serving as a member of the french national assembly, and as mayor of the town, he's the founder and driving force behind an important think tank that spurred critical reflection on critical issues in france. in may, 2012, in an election that stunned much of the establishment, he was elected president of the unp. he won the election by doing precisely throughout his career in public life. frankly addressing key issues of concern to voters such as immigration. often leave other officials scweem squeamish. because of his insight and experience, tee manty, and powerful debating skills. all of which we will see this evening he's among the leading

figure in french politics and will be for some time to come. let me sals say we're honored to his wife with us as well. let me conclude and give a warm welcome. he will speak and take questions from the audience. [applause] [applause] mr. president. it's a pleasure and great honor for me to be with you tonight and let me tell you something. i apologize for being late because first of all, in order to be on time, i decided from paris to come and to fly with a plane from united airlines, and -- [laughter] something material happened. i would like to tell you. the plane break down and the

crewmembers said sorry, we will be very late. so i said no problem, i will take air france. [laughter] and the plane of united airlines totally canceled and the one of air france arrived on time. it's adjust symbol to say that sometimes i've heard that in america there is sort of french bashing. i would like to proport my own experience about the fact that sometimes the french airplanes are arriving on time. and it's the way for me to say, again, to convince them that i'm happy and very proud to be your guest tonight. because it's a great opportunity for me to tell you a little bit about what is going on in europe and in fran -- france during this very particular time we are living all together. first of all, i would like to tell you about personal

reflections about the european crisis. what we have to face now, and then i will be very happy to answer to you questions if you have some. first of all, the word about the crisis we have to face. this is not punt yule economy crisis. it's a long-term crisis. it is the crisis of a continent that once represented an intellectual, cultural, economic, and moral leadership. it sees great rising and becoming political and economic gibbets. this means for many -- -- a relative decline and for a continue innocent like europe with history which is our

history, this means many things. siege -- psychpsychologically and politically as a country. to reestablish -- while strengthening german friendship. in order for europe to resist the world great changes, and in order to keep at bay, the threat of war, europe is sought to build an ambitious project. they put in place a political

and economic union constructed not thanks to violence or to conquest, but through great addition of the states and the peoples. the idea that a union makes strength which is, as you know, the model of europe. and as a crumbing down on the uss, the accelerated base of globalization, the emergence of great countries, transforms this. the european union rapidly opened up a door to eastern exsoviet members, and sought -- by getting rid of the seen by many as a -- the european union grew bigger following different ways. following the recent are 28 state member.

with different problem converged 17 countries and up to the currency. rapid enlargement and common currency, that was the gamble. they met the bet europe would be reconciled and prosperous. when it comes to peace, europe succeeded. and this is a great achievement. think about the fact this continent which france and germany waging war every 30 years, 1817, 1914, '39 is no peaceful. many have read very famous speech that david cameron

delivered a year ago or 18 months ago. this speech was very interesting because the british prime minister gave achievement and prosperity. and the confusion of europe than successful for peace, but not for prosperity. and this is exactly the challenge that we have to face, no. i would like to the opinion polls we show every time when we survey european and french. the american institute pugh research center is published a very interesting and terrible quote.

in 2012, no. yes, 2012. sorry. 2012. i get it. sorry. because i'm jet lagged. 60% of the french were facial to either european union 60 to 41. even the britain was better with the 43. the votes made during the last 20th century to create a more unified europe, now from suffer the economy crisis. all in all, only 45% of the correspondents in europe say they are favorable to the european union. it means a lot about the

european cities and about the future of european union. the rise of -- in europe is real i would like to say a word about that. for several years the extremist leaders have used the crisis to gain votes. be at the far right like the french and 18% in the last presidential election. 18%. 27% for greece. even the political parties 25% for the n5s in italy. they all play a -- they scapegoat brussels and the euro. why such a extreme right are

extremely left far right. friewt is europe remain -- [inaudible] for some states including france the euro was seen as an achievement with it should have looked at as a starting point. the common currency of not the final achievement. it was the beginning of a long pass, and we are probably made a big mistake by not selling enough to european people how the euro bring us to build a future and not only the end of a story. it was all the more important that the creation of the euro follow the rules and procedures that use to rule the german monetary system. it included independence of the centralback which only controls the -- to money or inflation and strong currency which forced everyone

to strife for competitiveness in order to protect. however, eurozone members adapted very different economic and social strategy instead of converging they diverged. let's take the example of france and germany. starting during the late '90s germany was -- angela merkel conducted heavy structure reform to boost the -- reduce the cost of welfare state and avoid of competitiveness. in the meantime, france benefited from low interest rates to accumulate cheap debts and did not conduct thes necessary reforms. or if it did it was not -- we even had a socialist government at the end of the

'90s that invet vented the uniform and working hours. the terrible 35 hours a week. then we more or less kept it. the french economy resisted thanks to the competitiveness of its workers, the innovation and the quality of our infrastructures. in the long run, we french still lost share of the international market and we were touched by a rise unemployment in the industrial sector. but all the countries such as spain or greece or italy experienced a lag -- a real economies made them in to industries and housing and tourist bubbles and the european monetary reality. coming from the u.s.a., the 2008 crisises had had a catalyst effect on europe. and it revealed the gap that was

widen between the competitive country and those less competitive. two radical options were possible. the first one was to accept the divergence and act along. the risk would have been to question the old european -- and to threaten these great project. the second option was to try and hear the -- by -- and use more constraint in order to make the economies converge. and i think that the rise of europe is linked to the economy crisis. and the way we choose the second option. it is noted by the european people to regain competitiveness and reduce deficit. but i also think that there are

the -- have a vision to defie objective and share those visions and objective with their disappointed citizens. not fully admitting the policies we take are it was responsible for the situation. this is exactly what is happening now in france. as a result a majority of europe is believed the crisis is endless and unavoidable. and beyond the economic aspect and the fear of decline, the rise of populous is also linked to an uncertain european

identity. and i would like to stress this second point, which is very important to understand what is up in europe now. europe was marked by nazi -- and fascism. it was for a long time reluctant to use the concept of nation and identity because of its past. it did not want to use anything that the differentiated between european national u and [inaudible] some are touched by the -- [inaudible] coming from the colony past of the 19 and 20th century. because there are many -- about the difficult past, they largely think that the concept of nation is super follow -- is a purpose --

identity roots or -- [inaudible] in fact -- limits will e, culturalless europe. this makes a difference. it created a peopling of doubt and uncertainty among european people. immigration which i understand i fied and never controlled nor really accepted. did not help. there are many control conflicts -- welcoming people in europe. historically, immigration more concurrence in the labor market affecting europes.

what is going on in europe and especially countries like france you have to keep in mind. let me tell you an ante-dote. i'm -- [inaudible] which is a city close to paris, it's very typical population was to fake the problem of immigration and the difficulty of what we call samelation. and i remember a story. that happened in my city ten years ago. i met in the streets a young lady 35 years old coming from algeria. she was french. her family was coming from there. and she was walking with her son, who is ten or 12 years old. and he was -- she come and say hello mr. mayor, how are you?

fine. and then she turned to her son and said, you see, this is the mayor of the city. you should ask him something. this is typically french. always asking when you meet the mayor of a city. i wanted to be like a teacher, you know, and i said to the young boy i said, you know, -- and i used the famous american sentence of jfk, said, you should ask what your country can do for your country. i was proud of me. it was a good opportunity to this boy. and the boy turned to his mother and said, mom, when are we going to come back to our country? this was a terrible summary about the failure of the

assimilation motel in france and europe. because it means what his mother or his father could have told him to let him think that france was not his country. as he had never been in another one than in fran. you see, and this means all the time we've spent by didn't accept the -- for 0 years, european country countries have failed to correctly name the problems. and could not come come up with policies. they should have found ways to adopt new immigrated population sometimes values that conflicted with liberal -- gender-equality, freedom of opinion, sexual freedom, and, you know, all of these --

and these broke tensions in the populations. if complicate everything for parties such as the one i preside, which are government parties. i'm the leader of the fence opposition. one of the main challenge that i have to face of the leader of my party is to bring the people to refuse to support far right parties. to make sure that everybody we never never work with the far right but at the same time not to vote for them because it may vote for them it means -- this is a very, very huge

challenge. because we want europe and france to be -- and benefit from it. but at the same time we cannot rely upon the reality of the problems. immigration, delink went, unemployment, tax system, failure of the welfare state, all of these issues are the key issues for the next. and we have to -- but i want to reassure you that europe of 2013 has nothing to do with europe of the 1930s. and stimes they were wondering about what is going on in europe with the rise of -- it's very different. first of all, because the nation-states. the will to take of europe

political i and to refuse the bureaucracy are the starting point of a new -- [inaudible] we are not facing with a unified and powerful ideology looming over europe like a spectrum. one needs to remain careful. but i refuse to say that frank is racism or europe is racist. i think there is political and economy response to the european crisis. i want to tell you my views about it. ..

we will have to do it in the present experience of our government shows that we have no other choice than to implement future reforms. in france responded to 50% in the 50s ,-com,-com ma 3% in the 70s, 1% now. globally even in 2013 situated between two and 3% ending the different measuring. this global transformation calls for profound national reforms with one abject give, reinforce or competitiveness.

there is an indicator. no one looks even though as it's important as the budgetary deficit is the commercial deficits. minus 67 billion euros for france in 2012 when the gemini surface is 188 billion euros. what does that mean? it means that our economy is totally unbalanced. we produce less and less so we have two import a growing part of what we consume and as a consequence we run a growing deficit and factories are closing. we consume but others are producing. the french crisis is not a crisis of demand. it is a crisis of supply, like in other countries in europe. our capacity to consume is not the problem because of the welfare state. what is the problem is our

capacity to produce and sell more goods and services in france. so we will be able to get rid of this spiral we are stuck and only if we manage to change. for a long time friends nurse demand by the development of public employment and redistribution. all this was financed by ever-growing taxes. now this cannot function anymore. we have to change it radically and that is exactly the program we are working on and we will have to change that and i want to use this very difficult. knack tim make -- with the french people because the high levels of taxes are now the main problem in the public opinion because people cannot afford them anymore. our future will depend on our

ability to integrate added value here in our national territory and this is the main challenge for us. for us momentum has arrived. we need to rebuild to make it competitive or we will not. [inaudible] and my intuition is that the french people are now getting awareness about the situation and the fact that we will have to make this crucial choice within the next two or three years. when france and germany managed to converge with our competitiveness new initiatives will be launched for a more assertive europe. because all that needs a very strong couple france and germany another priority that will get us out of the arresting crisis is to accept the permanent assessments of what works and

what does not unction in the european project which is very common in america and much harder in europe. it is time to reaffirm the political dimension of this project which cannot only be a free-trade zone or a space left to the bureaucrats imagination. for a long time be viewed europe as a mechanism for progressive integration without considering the political action components to it. in fact they are the things that work and things that do not work there are ways in which immigration -- integration needs to be pushed further and that of the states but because of familiarity. this is what i call the truth for europe. i'm convinced to european i am

convinced that europe sometimes need to read ss itself. i could sum up in one sentence. i am so fond of europe that i want another. for instance concerning budgetary and taxes we should push integration even further in france and germany. when it comes to energy how can we understand that we are not able in europe to have a centralized way for europeans to guide and negotiate. each country doesn't by itself. it's impossible today to say we are able to do it for the old europe when it comes to migratory policies. we should strengthen the role of the states in order to take into consideration the national constraints. clearly we need a pragmatic europe. we need solutions and projects.

europe also needs to take on its orders limitless enlargement as a source of inefficiencies. saying this does not correspond or anyone. it's more about establishing strategy with our neighbors. with this political will and the reaffirmation of the project of our roots and our frontiers i believe europe all be able to respond to the skepticism. this for the people is all the more necessary that we have a responsibility to take on the international scheme. as you can see, i remain confident that europe's capital will bounce back tears at believe in france's capacity to regain european leadership but in any case this has to go hand-in-hand with the profound political renewal which contains

a vision, a project and the capacity for leadership. meeting the first opposition party which is a government party, be ready for any eventuality to prepare for modernization and recovery. this means that we need to start accepting the truths and produce real solutions. it also means that we need to bring about in the coming months the indispensable transformation of france's future, labor, immigration, france doesn't need 100 positions but 546 great decisions. not in five years, in six months. i have reflected a lot upon those issues and i'm eager to

confront my vision with that of other international actors. the -- decided by the u.s. administration goes with a certain american role from europe. africa and from the middle east. this is what we think coming from europe. the leadership from behind which is the dash is preferable to direct action. okay, i got it but this is no more than ever the time for europeans to take a more direct responsibility in the security however only france and the u.k. are putting reforms and to strengthening the defense even if in most cases major budgets are decreasing. france needs to continue investing in national defense.

it must take on its global power role and its importance as a member of the u.n. security council. this is my conviction and i'm fighting for it but france cannot put all the efforts alone i supported the president's decision to intervene in mali. in this country jihadists were about to lead a defensive bus taking over control of the state institutions that remained. with the afghan experience in mind, could we reiterate this experience and let al qaeda find a new sanctuary in mali? up for. france was the only one to intervene, the only one. europeans seem shy, reluctant, even when their own security was

at stake. and this brings us to think about what must be our plan for europe and others in such situations and that is why we have note hesitation in france about the fact that we acted send troops to mali. although europeans have to play the game of power, france just rejoined the nato integrated command structure. it's no longer about comparison of nato and the u.n. defense. today's is not fullness, it's more the emptiness threatening our neighborhood, what you call the greater middle east that includes maghreb, the near east in the middle east. a profound deep -- with inevitable disturbances and majored jill political change. this area of the world we have

had difficulties defining, switching from one access to the other or at least from one obstacle to the other. every international system looks for order and strives for stability. some would consider this realism forced cynicism. this is what we europeans are for a long time prioritizing in our approach of the arab world. we have widely underestimated frustration of our populations, the that area before the arab spring presented come some characteristics. first of all before the government -- arab spring's government which failed to create wealth, in the meantime. [inaudible] second the lack of economic perspectives coupled with daily

security forces and the repression of public liberties. third, a feeling of downgrading of the international scheme especially with the lack of solutions with the israeli-palestinian countries. fourth, archaic methods of governance. words like soft power, public diplomacy, national dialogue, clinical forms where the words were missing from the little discourse of these countries. the old leaders in the fall of government that were sent to be be -- 30 use shears for mubarak, 23 years for ben ali. we shut our eyes and favored stability and predictability. however thinking that iraq's populations resilience and accepted the possibilities was

mistaken. this was not tenable. the other mistake consistent looking to impose other people's democratic values that we consider any vessel. the international system has to be inspired by the idealists, our western democracies have tried to exploit these values for reelections. diversion of power, independence of justice, equality between men and women, respect of -- sometimes they did so without taking into consideration the stabilities, the cultural political and religious specificities. this was one of the motives behind the push of administrations intervention in iraq and behind all that we have called for regime change a doctrine. i observe now that the iraqi war

and the weakening of the country have directly benefited iran, giving this war and involvement with the bush administration was not expecting. today feeling guilty or having supported some of the -- authoritarian regimes in the iraq war and we have shifted to the opposite remaining silent except for calling for free elections and for the promotion of democracy. we even rejoiced for elections results whatever they are including ben to get the power to islamists and muslim brothers. we considered too quick weight that mohammad massey in egypt were normal interlocutors but they proved out not to be so. can we negotiate -- and consider him a real partner

bob mounting terrorist organizations? we must stop supporting secular dictators just because we want to protect stability but we also need to stop treating parties like ordinary parties. just because they had the capacity to win elections. the rejection of islam seems energetic and indonesia in a different way highlights the fact that islamism was unable to conceive the social and economic changes expected from those revolutions. it's inability to wield power, to get rid of the -- authoritarian practices and the total lack of compromise make it incapable for the exercise of the power and relegated to its political sister in which it is not really involved.

it only took one year to discredit those movements. my friends, i would like to tell you my conviction. we must combine the search for stability with the assertion of specific values that reunite us in international relations. they must respect the specific balance between those two requirements. i would like to illustrate this conviction with some reflections about the topic we discussed today. the islamic republic of -- after five days of tough international organizations and agreement on the net we. issues was finally reached between tehran and the negotiating parties between the days of saturday the 23rd and sunday the 24th of november.

this agreement is only for lemon area and its aim is to permit the progressive trust into tehran and the major powers. under one hand looking for stability can lead us to seek a compromise and make a bet a bet. under the will of president rouhani to ensure the sustainability of the regime by the constructive interaction with the rest of the world. some science can give credit to this position. for example in the past mr. rouhani asked for an improvement to further relations with saudi arabia following the iranian regime that would realize that only real concessions of the nuclear issue would make it in international

standardization. rouhani would try to make sure that iran is at the threshold and would negotiate the best. this obsession for uranium enrichment would not amec acquiring nuclear weapons and even less to use it alone but would be an inch and the service of the desired tehran to be a great regional power. it shows its will to become an essential and avoidable spokesperson for all the issues related to the greater and middle east. why would the iranian regime cause it's classical suicide by crossing the line of the intersect of both? today iran thanks of itself has a -- why the country is huge potential. don't forget the remarkable

level of education and information of younger generations. iran has some sense of power. it is true that the general agreement, if it is followed,

is there is a rich edition of social media that goes back to the era of cicero and the point is that you don't need a digital network to do social media. if you have one that goes faster but you could actually do it in the old days so cicero did it with polaris roles and messengermessenger s running two in front of the members of the roman elite who are links to him and they all spoke to each other

and it was very much a social environment that there were many other examples that occurred throughout history. martin luther and his use of pamphlets and tom payne and his catholic common sense and the way that pamphlets were used more broadly in the american and french revolutions. >> on august 9, 1974 vice president ford was sworn in as president of the united states. this was the dress that mrs. ford was wearing at the swearing-in ceremony. she was less than excited about becoming first lady by president ford encouraged her saying we can do this. she resolved that if i'm going to do this i'm going to have fun doing this in the fund for her started almost immediately. within 10 days she had a state dinner to entertain king hussein

of jordan and was something that she had to prepare for is her role of first lady and she hit the ground running. >> we were just at the hudson institute carried we are having technical problems there so we will try to fix the connection. for the time being a look at today's white house briefing. >> hello everyone. welcome to the white house. for the first briefing of december at least from this podium and i hope everyone here had a terrific thanksgiving holiday and was able to spend time with friends and family. i have no announcements to make so i will go straight to your questions. julie. >> there were reports over the weekend, officials on the status of the health care web site indicating the worst of the problems are over, but there are

still other problems in the system. as the president comfortable with the level the web site is operating at? >> the president believes that the site has been significantly improved and the teams in place have worked 24/7 for weeks now to make those improvements including significant improvements that were made over the weekend. but the work is not done. as we have been saying for some time, there would he continued issues that we needed to address and will continue to do that but with the improvements that were made and discussed by jeff over the weekend, we believe that this web site is and will function effectively for the vast majority of users and each day we will continue to take steps to make further improvements so that experience is enhanced for users every day. >> insurers are saying that there is a problem still on the back and wear for those folks

that are actually able to enroll the information the insurance companies the getting is incomplete and in some cases totally unusable. can the administrative sure people who have been able to enroll that they will in fact have coverage beginning january 1? >> look, i'm glad you asked me that question. there are a couple things i want to say about that. first of all we are very mindful of making sure consumers who want coverage starting in january are able to get it. cms is reaching out directly to consumers who have already selected a plan to let them know to be in touch with their plan to pay their first premium to ensure the coverage as it kicks in and know that plans are working hard to make sure their new customers are covered as well. this is a joint effort to reach out to those who have enrolled to make sure that every step they need to know they take every step to ensure that coverage kicks in. furthermore cms is having daily

conversations with issuers to get feedback from them. we haven't said the number of significant fixes to this so-called 834 forms. that's the vehicle by which information is transmitted to the issuers and we believe that the majority of fixes to 834 forms have been made including significant ones that were made over the weekend. we expect the information now sent to insurers to be vastly improved but we are going to continue to work with issuers to make sure that whatever remaining problems exist are addressed and fixed. >> you can in sure folks that have signed up for well sign up through december 23 that they will have coverage beginning january 1? >> what i would say is cms is reaching out to those who haven't rolled, to make sure that they know the steps that they need to take to ensure their coverage kicks in. if the consumer and the consumer enrolls in a plan by december 23 and makes her first payment by

the date set by their ensure they are covered beginning january 1. if consumers are not sure if they are an role they should call our customer call center or the insurer of their choice so they can be sure they are covered by january 1. this is a high priority making sure that those who are enrolled are aware of the steps they need to take, including the need to pay their premiums on time for coverage. we are working with insurers to make sure that those who are enroll snow this information we are reaching out and telling consumers if they are not sure if they are enrolled they should call the call center or their insurer directly. >> let me ask with me about the dispute with vice president biden in asia right now visiting japan and china. is he carrying any message from the white house in terms of this dispute?

>> the vice president is on a long planned trip to asia that includes several countries and while a number of issues will be raised in the discussions he will have, given the increase in regional tensions the adi z that china announce will be an issue that the vice president will race. he is an excellent relationship with the leaders of all three countries and he will underscore how important is to avoid actions to prevent miscalculations that could undermine peace, security and prosperity in the region. this is an opportunity for vice president biden to raise their concerns directly with policymakers in beijing and to seek clarity regarding china's intentions and make in this move at this time. it's also an opportunity to confer with our allies japan and the republic of korea both of whom are direct we affected by china's actions. >> jay along those lines north korea is holding an 85-year-old,

edward newman. is this something the vice president will raise on the strip? >> we are deeply concerned about the welfare of the u.s. citizens held. kenneth bayh has been a north korea custody -- north korean custody for over a year and we continue to urge the dprk authorities to to grant them amnesty and immediate release and the urge the immediate release of meryl newman who was detained more recently given mr. newman's advanced age and health emissions -- conditions. we urge them to release mr. newman so he can return home and be reunited with his family. i don't have an itemized list of topics of discussion for the vice president but in addition to all the important issues we discussed with the governments of the countries he is visiting i'm sure that those that are getting a lot of attention right now will be among those issues discussed. >> back on health care for second.

since the new system has been activated, why has this been done and how much traffic is -- on the web site? >> let me say it couple of things. one of the improvements that has been made since october 1 was the improvement to the queuing system. we absolutely anticipate that on this day in particular because it is the first workday after that deadline was set for ourselves to make sure that the web site was functioning effectively for the vast majority of users, we would see a surge in visitors to the web site. i don't have specific numbers for you but i can tell you we are seeing that surge and i believe, and i will leave it to cms to give more detail. i believe something on the order of 375,000 visitors had gone to health care.gov by noon today. 375,000 which is obviously a large number.

one of the fixes with the new queuing system ,-com,-com ma the improved queuing system so when we saw a surge in users we would have the means by which individuals who are interested in enrolling would get information about when they can return to the site and enroll more effectively and efficiently and out way make the whole operation more effective than smooth. for those visitors who aren't ready to buy a plan or enroll in a plan, they can avail themselves of a new option that is available now which is an improved window shopping tool which will about them in greater detail and april i will get to you. you look very puzzled as does anita, but the new window shopping tool, the grated window shopping tool will allow visitors to get more detail about the options available to

them and they can do that without enrolling and therefore would not have to get a few if they are trying to enroll in a period what we are seeing today. >> is there any sort of the cybermonday for health care.gov? [laughter] >> well what i can tell you is i certainly hope to avail myself at some point today of cybermonday anyway, when i get home, to begin to make holiday purchases but look, what we have said all along about the november 30, december 1, december 2 deadline is this was a marker along the road towards the progress we need to make. by november 30, december 1 we would see the system, the health care.gov works -- health care.gov web site working for the majority of users but

the work is not done and we will continue to make improvements. we will continue to have folks working around-the-clock on the site to make it more effective every day and what i was trying to say and josh and others were trying to say and the president in the days and weeks leading up to this deadline is that it wouldn't all happen at once. those improvements were being made every day and we saw those improvements affect positively the user experience every day through november. though i think we are not done with the work that needs to be done on the web site but we have i think passed an important milestone when it comes to it working effectively for the vast majority of users. >> on that note if you go to the web site periodically throughout the day today and you hit the login button or go to the apply on line button it does take you to that screen where you are asked to e-mail and come back later.

that seems to be coming up almost every hour that i've checked it all day long and i'm sure given the volume i'm sure it's not affecting it that much but is that going to be acceptable if that's the norm for an extended period of time? >> what i think is important to note is the queuing system, the more sophisticated improved queuing system is a feature designed to improve the user experience. when we talked about concurrent users it was always going to be the case as we anticipated on a day like today he would see a surge beyond even the vastly improved capacity levels that are the result of the changes that have been made in the fixes that have been made and what was important and we talked about this before november 30 is that we have the queuing system that made for a better user experience so individuals could get in and could be notified

when was the best time to return to health care.gov and at role if they so desired. as i mentioned earlier among the other improvements made to the site is an improved and more sophisticated window shopping tool which americans who are only at the stage now of looking at the options available to them to avail themselves without enrolling and if they are visiting the site during a surge period without having to get in the queue. >> on a conference call jeffries sign seemed to take issue with the management structure and style that have been in place in guiding health care.gov to its launch. was he talking about secretary sebelius? who is he talking about when he questioned the way the process was being managed? >> i think what jeff has been tasked with doing is working on every day is improving the management of the health care.of

operation and focusing specifically on the fixes necessary to the web site and that work has been ongoing and it has delivered significant improving -- and improvements. but i am sure jeff was also referring to is something that we have all been quite candid about. the web site did not function nearly up to standards that were necessary, october 1 and it should have. that is on us and that is why we have dedicated the resources and brainpower we have to fix fix it because this is all about the goal we set with the passage of the affordable care act which is millions of americans need to be able to avail themselves of quality affordable health insurance, many of them for the first time for the first time in many years. and focus on that and

healthcare.gov and the other avenues by which you can enroll our means to that end. but it is absolutely a responsibility to make sure that web site which is an important part of the process of getting those americans who want quality affordable health insurance work effectively and jeff has been an important part of that effort since he came on board to do this. [inaudible] is it just by today? >> by noon today, 275,000 visitors to this site. i believe that is today's figure, not today's and yesterday's that cms -- it's just today. >> is that 12 noon? >> i think that's correct in that elite cms will be breathing and we will have more information available. i was getting before it came out to get a sense of the volume we

are seeing which again we anticipated which is why was so important to put in place the queuing system because those are just visitors but there are obviously those who are trying to and want to enroll and they want to make sure that their experience is vastly improved and if they are trying to enroll during a surge period that they are given the information they need to make sure that they are in the queue income come back to this site at a time when it will be more effective and efficient for them. >> can i just follow up on that? that is vastly more than they say they can handle any day, bright? do you expect the surge, that's a one-day thing? >> i would prefer you to cms for what their expectations are for numbers. we expected today to be a big day. >> why the queuing system if

that's our smaller? >> again there are visitors visitors to this site and those who are trying to enroll on the site. you can go and visit and shop. you can spend a little time on it or spend a long time on it. if you register to select a plan and thereby enroll that activates a different part of the system and that is where you would get in the queue, not to visit but to enroll. 375,000 visitors to the web site john. >> jay, first there had been reports that 100,000 roughly to enroll in the month of november. is that correct? >> i don't have specifically the kinds of things that we saw in the previous month that hhs

collect and gathered. i simply would urge you to wait until we have hard data from hhs and cms. what i can tell you is improvements were made to the web site throughout the month of november as we discussed and i would expect that the numbers who successfully enrolled in november would exceed the numbers who successfully enrolled in a sober but i don't have a hard figure for you. >> in terms of a goal that you set for this moment in time about the web site being functional for the vast majority of users, is it mission accomplished? >> as i was saying john, we were working very hard to make the necessary fixes to improve the web site so by december 1 it would function effectively for the vast majority of users. the metrics we used to measure that have to deal with response time and stability of the site and the error rate and i know

jeff and others who do the cms briefings have gone into those metrics and we believe we made important progress that we set out to make a november 30 but as we said in november, and i have said just now, the work continues to make improvements that still need to be made to the web site and the focus here is not on -- the endgame isn't the best possible and most effective web site that we can build but a system by which all those millions of americans who are clearly interested in enrolling in purchasing quality affordable health insurance are able to do so. that is our goal and that work continues today. we have passed important milestones in that effort but our work continues. >> let me try to crystallize that because we have tried to pin you down on what vast majority means and trying to quantify it.

very clearly in terms of the goal you set for this moment in time is it mission accomplished? >> using that phrase is not one i would employee but what i will say is what jeff said, that we were up to make the necessary improvements up to the web sites of the vast majority of americans who use the web site have an experience in which the site functions effectively. i know i said in november and that tovar it does not mean that there will be no goblins with the web site going forward. that doesn't even in for on the most highly functional private sector web sites so what it does mean is that we have made significant progress. we have made the improvements to the system that we hoped we could and more work continues. >> hout explained for most of the day so far people that tried to get on have gotten that message that the web site is too crowded? >> first of all i think i noted the number of people who have

visited the web site up until noon today. we completely anticipated and i know telegraphed that we would see surges in the number of visitors of people trying to enroll and that is why we will bat so we would improve the experience of those users who visited the site over what they experienced back in october when the web site was not functioning effectively for the vast majority of users and those that were trying to get in and weren't being queued up three sophisticated system that allowed them to return to the site at a time when it would function more efficiently for them. >> what do you say to those that a contract in this from the start that still went on yesterday and today still unable to enroll? what would you say to them? >> look love, i would say that we have seen steady improvement in the site and that improvement continued over the weekend and today.

what is absolutely the case is that we need to continue our work and that while the vast majority of users are able to access this site and have it function effectively on a day like today when you have a surge that we are likely seeing you are going to get this queue message potentially if you are trying to enroll which allows for you to determine when it will be less crowded and that is a fast improvement over the experience people had during surge periods or any period really in october. it's important to note and it goes back to some of the confusion there were visitors on the site that were trying to enroll potentially and it's also the issue of how many overall visitors to the site over certain period of time that day or half a day versus the number of visitors at a given moment which is what generates the queue message. you are able to window shop using a much more specific tool

anywhere in the past and we are confident that the number of people who are successfully navigating the system is improving and has improved significantly. >> one last question. your predecessor robert gibbs -- >> it was a great day on saturday. speedster, he did. it will be an exclusive all -- inexplicable -- mr. gibbs said it would be inexplicable for someone am false with the web site doesn't get fired or group of people don't get fired. would you agree that? >> i know robert said this in that interview that it is important to focus right now i'm on making the necessary fixes to the web site so it functions effectively and we continue to make those fixes so that improvements continue to be made. issues on personnel are not something that we are focusing

on right now when it comes to making the affordable care act work for the american people. we want to make sure that millions of americans who so clearly are interested in significant numbers in the access provided to them by the affordable care act to buy affordable health insurance are able to get it and what we said in past weeks remains true today. we are focused on not monday morning quarterbacking. i think the president noted we will go back and look at this period and there is no question that he tops the list among those individuals who are frustrated by the failures that we saw with healthcare.gov and its lunch but right now he wants his team focused on making prudence for the american people who again as today is evidence of our soap clearly interested in this quality affordable health insurance.

>> the president was on the west coast last week in the white house called in several allies in the campaign for the health care law and said you know next week don't pursue a big advertising or enrollment push because we are not quite ready. doesn't that speak to go the site is improved, it still -- fragility and even the people that support the law were ready to launch a public relations campaign in who were instructed by the white house to hold off because we were not ready at? >> i think the numbers i cited ms. briefing demonstrate. our issue is not with the number of people that demonstrated their interest in coming to the web site and potentially enrolling in getting covered. we are focused on making sure that process works for them many many americans. >> they want to make it work. >> what i'm saying is.

>> they are saying don't do it yet because it's not ready yet. >> for the three and in 75,000 people visited the site by noon today they didn't need an advertising campaign to visit. we firmly believe and expected that in this period in particular we would see many many americans looking at their options and enrolling and so our focus is on not trying to advertise and get more americans to do that because we are seeing those american show up already with a demonstrated interest -- our focus is on making sure the web site works as well as possible and they can enroll in this critical time. >> so there is no need for families usa or other groups, and roll america to do anything to advocate for people? >> what i'm saying is in this

goes to your question, on december 2 of this week we do not see a need to inform people of the fact that they can go to a web site and look at their options and enroll. >> what they need is a functional web site to handle large capacities and help it get rolling, right? >> again major i would point to many briefings that i and jeff zients had given. it is designed targeting for this period so it was functioning as it was supposed to function on october 1. had numbers associated with current users in total visitors that day that we believe we can achieve that the surge periods were always going to exceed that which is why it was important to make the improvements to the queuing system that we made. in a week like this when we expect heightened interest and heightened interest demonstrated

by the number of visitors to the web site or the number of people trying to enroll for we believe the numbers are burying us out the fair focuses we got to be on making sure that those systems work as effectively as possible. >> this week people who are close to the web site and also on the projections you made internally, is not this week but next week or two weeks is a crucial period of time because they believe in the massachusetts experience reminds them of this that for those who want coverage by january 1 it's probably going to be an even bigger surge then we are like to see for people from december 15 to december 23, the final deadline if you want your coverage to be effective on january first. not just for this week but what's for projected internally here larger numbers of people who are not going to be visiting the site is needing to get that covered so they have that on

january 1. are you confident the web site will be ready for that expected and projected surge of people? >> we are confident that we have achieved significant improvement in the web site and its functionality is measured by the metrics we have done thus far and we will continue to make progress in improvements to the web site in the days and weeks ahead. you're absolutely right that for those who want coverage on january 1, they need to have enrolled by december 23 and obviously to have paid their premium by the deadline set by their insurer. >> is going to be the biggest spike that this administration with seen in people coming to the web site. >> that may be the case but i would have refer you to the cms briefings for what they might have about their expectations. i think it's always been the case as we have anticipated even prior to the problems we had with the web site that you would see relatively small levels of

enrollment in the first month and in our case it was much smaller than what was expected because of the problems with the site and those numbers would increase and that they would increase significantly as we broached those deadlines. december 23 is one and march 31 is another. >> duke repeat use of the site in the functionality and whether people can get what they need like december 23 will be the next biggest test of this entire process? >> i would certainly have read that is an important period. all these days in december are important in every day from now until march 31 it's important to make sure that everybody out there who wants to enroll in and purchase quality affordable health insurance is able to do so and it's on us to make sure that they have the means and tools necessary to do that. that is why we are continuing to work. that is why we continue to make

improvements and changes that we have made. we believe the improvements made thus far has been significant and the web site as it functions today has vastly improved over what it was on launch day but we are going to continue to work every day to make sure that the experiences for the users is as good as possible. >> very quickly what does the administration think is at stake right now? it's been a long time since there has been any kind of even low-level sense of attentional military misunderstanding, military confusion, military confrontation with china. >> let me say that the united states remains deeply concerned that china announced the establishment of an east china sea air defense identification zone. that is the ati cia mentioned earlier. this appears to be a profit of attempt to unilaterally change the status quo with the east china sea and raises the risk of

miscalculation, confrontation and accidents. we are consulting and correlating closely with japan republic of korea and friends and allies in the region. china announced the ati see even though the newly announced aei's includes territories administered by japan. we do not accept the legitimate in a sea of china's requirements for operating in the newly declared ati see and is caused confusion increased the risk of action underscores the validity of our concerns and the need for china to resend procedures. as we have repeatedly said and their actions have demonstrated, we believe that these kinds of provocations create risk of

miscalculation and you know we don't accept the legitimacy of what china announced. the vice president is in the region as you know opening an important meeting and we are office for consulting. >> is there specific message to the chinese leader's. >> yes. >> can you square that with the demonstrations recommendations for civilian aircraft identifying go through the procedures that china has now even though it does not recognize and considers this adiz invalid? >> for safety and security of the passengers the u.s. carriers operating internationally operate consistent with notices to airmen issued by foreign countries. however let me be clear. this in no way indicates the u.s. government acceptance of china's for varmints in the newly declared adiz and has no bearing on insisting u.s. government position we do not

except china's requirements. this is about the safety and security of passengers and is not an indication of any change in opposition. we do not accept the legitimacy of china's requirements. >> jay back to health care. it sounds like you didn't meet the deadline of the more listened to your answers because izzy keele and manuel said the web site is working reasonably well and he said it's vastly improved. there has been significant progress but not necessarily that it's working well and effectively for the vast majority of users as you acknowledge with jim and john in majors and others. you are still getting the same error messages. >> i think they're confusing error messages with the queuing message which is quite a different thing entirely. the queue message is a specific tool that was the rated improved to be more sophisticated so that when there were surges in traffic on the web site and when the number of users reached a

certain level that people would get those messages that they wanted to enroll there was a better time for them to come back. >> they are in a different line now. >> actually i contest that and i would ask you to find anywhere rice said that everybody would be able to enroll instantly on this day. >> the goal is obviously to enroll more people, right? >> i would point you to the fact that more people are visiting the site and are able to effectively go from beginning to end when it comes to enrolling than was the case in october and in november. significant improvements have been made and the vast majority of users we believe are able to use the web site and have it function effectively for them.

that does not mean and we never said it would mean that there would be no problems moving forward, that they would never be an error message for a delayed response for a page to load. that's certainly not the case with even the most high functioning commercial web sites of complexity and size but what our goal is -- our goal is to make sure we continue to improve the overall experience because the purpose here is to make sure that americans have access to quality and affordable health care insurance and health care. gov site is an important part of that. we are continuing to work everyday to make improvements that are necessary. >> compared to the other the team is operating with private-sector velocity and effectiveness now. can you reasonably expect that it's working under that effectiveness according to the administration with by your own estimation 24/7 outside consultants? is it reasonable to expect you can keep that same level of

private-sector velocity and effectiveness as you call it you know over the next months, years as is the government doing it, not the private sector. this is the government operation ended obviously didn't work before. you've now say it's working with private sector velocity. can you reasonably keep up that pace? >> i was a couple of things. the answer is yes we can continue in the days ahead continue to work around-the-clock as we have in recent days and weeks to make necessary improvements. two, what is absolutely the case is that the private sector does some things very well and better than the government can and browning effect if web sites may be one of them, is one of them. but the affordable care acts demonstrates is that it's important for government to take action in order for example to do something the private sector has failed to do which is reduce the inflation rate in health

care costs. what we saw prior to the passage of the affordable health care act is enormous increases annually in the amount of money that this country spends on health care and what we have seen since the passage of the affordable care act contradicting every prediction made by republicans and critics is the cost of health care in the growth of the costs have been declining and that is a significant goal set by the affordable care act and a significant achievement over threes three years previous three years have seen the lowest growth in health care costs of any time in the past half-century. so we are going to -- it goes to think the heart of the matter is was the launch of the web site unsuccessful and the answer is yes. was it absolutely our responsibility to take every measure necessary to make the fixes we could make so that web site functions more effectively for the americans who want -- they don't want an effective web site. they won't affordable quality coverage.

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